THE    MESSAGE 


"I  SAW  THAT  QUEEN  OF  ANCIENT  BRITONS  AT  THE  HEAD  OF 
HER  WILD,  SHAGGY  LEGIONS"     (See  page  233) 


A.  J.  DAWSON 


Jluthor  of  "  Hidden  Manna,"  "  African  Nights  Entertain- 

ments," "  Daniel  Whyte,"  "  God's  Foundling," 

"Ronald  Kestrel,"  etc. 


Illustrated  from  Color  Sketches 
(By  H.  M.  BROCK 


DANA  ESTES  &  COMPANY,  BOSTON 
E.  GRANT   RICHARDS,   LONDON 


Copyright,  April  77,  7907 
BY  DANA  ESTES  &  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved 
Entered  at  Stationers'1  Hall 


COLONIAL  PRESS 

ELKCTROTYPKD  AND  PRINTED  BY  C.  H.  SIMONDS  &  Co. 
BOSTON,  U.S.A. 


SRLF 
URL 


CONTENTS 


PART   I.  — THE  DESCENT 

OHAPT  PAGE 

I.  IN   THE   MAKING 3 

II.  Ax   THE   WATER'S  EDGE       ....  12 

III.  AN   INTERLUDE 17 

IV.  THE    LAUNCHING 29 

V.  A  JOURNALIST'S  EQUIPMENT        ...  41 

VI.  A  JOURNALIST'S  SURROUNDINGS  ...  53 

VII.  A  GIRL  AND    HER   FAITH  66 

VIII.  A   STIRRING  WEEK 78 

IX.  A   STEP  DOWN 90 

X.  FACILIS  DESCENSUS   AVERNI         ...  101 

XL  MORNING   CALLERS Ill 

XII.  SATURDAY   NIGHT   IN  LONDON       .        .        .  121 

XIII.  THE   DEMONSTRATION  IN  HYDE  PARK  .        .  131 

XIV.  THE   NEWS 143 

XV.  SUNDAY   NIGHT   IN  LONDON          .        .        .  153 

XVI.  A   PERSONAL    REVELATION    ....  163 

XVII.  ONE    STEP   FORWARD 168 

XVIII.  THE    DEAR   LOAF 177 

XIX.  THE  TRAGIC    WEEK 188 

XX.  BLACK   SATURDAY 198 

XXI.  ENGLAND   ASLEEP  .                  ....  208 

PART   II.  — THE  AWAKENING 

I.  THE   FIRST   DAYS 221 

II.  ANCIENT   LIGHTS 228 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

III.  THE   RETURN  TO  LONDON     ....  237 

IV.  THE   CONFERENCE 243 

V.     MY   OWN   PART 257 

VI.     PREPARATIONS 262 

VII.  THE   SWORD  OF  THE   LORD  ....  271 

VIII.     THE    PREACHERS 291 

IX.     THE   CITIZENS 301 

X.  SMALL  FIGURES  ON  A  GREAT  STAGE  .        .  312 

XI.  THE    SPIRIT  OF   THE    AGE     ....  317 

XII.  BLOOD   Is    THICKER   THAN    WATER      .        .  330 

XIII.  ONE   SUMMER   MORNING        ....  338 

XIV.  "FOR  GOD,  OUR   RACE,  AND  DUTY"   .         .  343 
XV.  "SINGLE   HEART   AND   SINGLE   SWORD'       .  352 

XVI.  HANDS   ACROSS   THE   SEA     ....  360 

XVII.     THE  PENALTY 366 

XVIII.     THE   PEACE 374 

XIX.  THE   GREAT   ALLIANCE          ....  383 

XX.  PEACE   HATH   HER   VICTORIES      .                 .  389 


VI 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

"  I  SAW  THAT  QUEEN  OF  ANCIENT  BRITONS  AT   THE 

HEAD  OF  HER  WILD,  SHAGGY  LEGIONS  "  Frontispiece 

THE  ROARING  CITY  .......          40 

"  RIVERS  USHERED  IN  Miss  CONSTANCE  GREY  "   .        .     114 

"  I    WAS    ON    MY    KNEES    AND    KISSING    THE     NERVP:LESS 

HAND"      .  212 


Non  his  juventus  orta  parentibus  infecit  aequor  sanguine 
Punico.  —  HOKACB. 


THE    MESSAGE 


IN    THE    MAKING 

"  Such  as  I  am,  sir —  no  great  subject  for  a  boaster,  I  admit-— 
you  see  in  me  a  product  of  my  time,  sir,  and  of  very  worthy 
parents,  I  assure  you."  — EZEK.IEL  JOT. 

AS  a  very  small  lad,  at  home  in  Tarn  Regis,  I  had 
but  one  close  chum,  George  Stairs,  and  he  went 
off  with  his  father  to  Canada,  while  I  was  away  for 
my  first  term  at  Elstree  school.  Then  came  Rugby, 
where  I  had  several  friends,  but  the  chief  of  them  was 
Leslie  Wheeler.  Just  why  we  should  have  been  close 
friends  I  cannot  say,  but  I  fancy  it  was  mainly 
because  Leslie  was  such  a  handsome  fellow,  and  always 
seemed  to  cut  a  good  figure  in  everything  he  did; 
while  I,  on  the  other  hand,  excelled  in  nothing,  and 
was  not  brilliant  even  in  the  expression  of  my  discon- 
tent, which  was  tolerably  comprehensive.  Withal,  in 
other  matters  beside  discontent,  I  was  a  good  deal  of 
an  extremist,  and  by  no  means  lacking  in  enthusiasm. 
My  father,  too,  was  an  enthusiast  in  his  quiet  way. 
His  was  the  enthusiasm  of  the  student,  and  his  work 
as  historian  and  archaeologist  absorbed,  I  must  sup- 

3 


THE    MESSAGE 

pose,  a  great  deal  more  of  his  interest  and  energy 
than  was  ever  given  to  his  cure  of  souls.  He  was 
rector  of  Tarn  Regis,  in  Dorset,  before  I  was  born, 
and  at  the  time  of  his  death,  to  be  present  at  which 
I  was  called  away  in  the  middle  of  the  last  term  of  my 
third  year  at  Cambridge.  I  was  to  have  spent  four 
years  at  the  University ;  but,  as  the  event  proved,  I 
never  returned  there  after  my  hurried  departure, 
three  days  prior  to  my  father's  death. 

The  personal  tie  between  my  father  and  those 
among  whom  he  lived  and  worked  was  not  a  very  close 
or  intimate  bond.  His  contribution  to  the  Cambridge 
History  was  greatly  appreciated  by  scholars,  and  his 
archaeological  research  won  him  the  respect  and  es- 
teem of  his  peers  in  that  branch  of  study.  But  I  can- 
not pretend  that  his  loss  was  keenly  felt  by  his  parish- 
ioners, with  most  of  whom  his  relations  had  been 
strictly  professional  rather  than  personal.  A  good 
man  and  true,  without  a  trace  of  anything  sordid  or 
self-seeking  in  his  nature,  my  father  was  yet  singu- 
larly indifferent  to  everything  connected  with  the 
daily  lives  and  welfare  of  his  fellow  creatures. 

In  this  he  was  typical  of  a  considerable  section  of 
the  country  clergy  of  the  time.  I  knew  colleagues  of 
his  who  were  more  pronounced  examples  of  the  type. 
One  in  particular  I  call  to  mind  (whose  living  was  in 
the  gift  of  a  Cambridge  college,  like  my  father's), 
who,  though  a  good  fellow  and  a  clean-lived  gentle- 
man, was  no  more  a  Christian  than  he  was  a  Buddhist 
—  less,  upon  the  whole.  Among  scholarly  folk  he 
made  not  the  slightest  pretence  of  regarding  the 
fundamental  tenets  of  the  Christian  faith  in  the  light 

4 


IN    THE    MAKING 

of  anything  more  serious  than  interesting  historical 
myths,  notable  sections  in  the  mosaic  of  folk-lore, 
which  it  was  his  pride  and  delight  to  study  and  un- 
derstand. 

Such  men  as  A —  R —  and  my  father  (and  there 
were  many  like  them,  and  more  who  shared  their 
aloofness  while  lacking  half  their  virtues)  lived  hard- 
working, studious  lives,  in  which  the  common  kinds  of 
self-indulgence  played  but  a  very  small  part.  Hon- 
ourable, kindly  at  heart,  gentle,  rarely  consciously 
selfish,  these  worthy  men  never  gave  a  thought  to  the 
current  affairs  of  their  country,  to  their  own  part  as 
citizens,  or  to  the  daily  lives  of  their  fellow  country- 
men. Indeed,  they  exhibited  a  kind  of  gentle  intoler- 
ance and  contempt  in  all  topical  concerns ;  and  though 
they  preached  religion  and  drew  stipends  as  expound- 
ers of  Christianity,  they  no  more  thought  of  "  pry- 
ing "  or  "  interfering,"  as  they  would  have  said,  into 
the  actual  lives  and  hearts  and  minds  of  those  about 
them,  than  of  thrusting  their  hands  into  their  parish- 
ioners' pockets. 

Stated  in  this  bald  way  the  thing  may  sound  incred- 
ible, but  those  whose  recollections  carry  them  back  to 
the  opening  years  of  the  century  will  bear  me  out  in 
saying  that  this  was  far  from  being  either  the  most 
distressing  or  the  most  remarkable  among  the  out- 
workings  of  what  was  then  extolled  as  a  broad  spirit 
of  tolerance.  Our  "  tolerance,"  our  vaunted  "  cosmo- 
politanism," were  far  more  dangerous  factors  of  our 
national  life,  had  we  but  known  it,  than  either  the 
insularity  of  our  sturdy  forbears  or  the  strength  of 
our  enemies  had  ever  been. 

5 


THE    MESSAGE 

Even  my  dear  mother  did  not,  I  think,  feel  the 
shock  of  her  bereavement  so  much  as  might  have  been 
supposed.  One  may  say,  without  disrespect,  that  the 
loss  of  my  father  gave  point  and  justification  to  my 
mother's  attitude  toward  life.  Kind,  gentle  soul  that 
she  was,  my  mother  was  afflicted  with  what  might  be 
called  the  worrying  temperament ;  a  disposition  char- 
acteristic of  that  troublous  time.  My  memory  seems 
to  fasten  upon  the  matter  of  domestic  labour  as  repre- 
senting the  crux  and  centre  of  my  dear  mother's 
grievances  and  topics  of  lament  prior  to  my  father's 
death.  The  subject  may  seem  to  border  upon  the 
ridiculous,  as  an  influence  upon  one's  general  point  of 
view ;  but  at  that  time  it  was  really  more  tragic  than 
farcical,  and  I  know  that  what  was  called  "  the  serv- 
ant question  "  —  as  such  it  was  gravely  treated  in 
books  and  papers,  and  even  by  leader-writers  and 
lecturers  —  formed  the  basis  of  a  great  deal  of  my 
mother's  conversation,  just  as  I  am  sure  that  it  col- 
oured her  outlook  upon  life,  and  strengthened  her 
tendency  to  worry  over  everything,  from  the  wear- 
and-tear  of  house-linen  to  the  morality  of  the  people. 
All  this  was  incomprehensible  and  absurd  to  my 
father,  though,  had  he  but  thought  of  it,  it  was  really 
more  human  than  his  own  attitude ;  for  certainly  my 
mother  was  interested  and  concerned  in  the  daily  lives 
of  her  fellow  creatures,  though  not  in  a  cheering  or 
illuminating  manner  perhaps. 

But,  as  I  say,  the  deprecatory,  worrying  attitude 
had  become  second  nature  with  my  mother  long  years 
before  her  widowhood,  and  had  lined  and  seamed  her 
poor  forehead  and  silvered  her  hair  before  my  Rugby 

6 


IN    THE    MAKING 

days  were  over.  Bereavement  merely  gave  point  to 
a  mood  already  well  established. 

That  I  should  not  return  to  Cambridge  was  decided 
as  a  matter  of  course  within  the  week  of  my  father's 
funeral,  when  we  learned  that  the  little  he  had  left 
behind  him  would  not  even  pay  for  the  dilapidations 
of  the  rectory.  There  was  practically  nothing,  when 
my  father's  affairs  were  put  in  order,  beyond  my 
mother's  little  property,  a  recent  legacy,  the  invest- 
ment of  which  in  Canadian  railway  stocks  brought  in 
about  a  hundred  and  fifty  a  year. 

Thus  I  found  myself  confronted  with  a  sufficiently 
serious  situation  for  a  young  man  whose  training  so 
far  had  no  more  fitted  him  for  taking  part  in  any 
particular  division  of  the  battle  of  life,  where  the 
prize  sought  is  an  income,  than  for  the  administration 
of  the  planet  Mars.  Rugby  was  better  than  some  of 
the  great  public  schools  in  this  respect,  for  a  lad  with 
definite  purposes  and  ambitions,  but  its  curriculum 
had  far  less  bearing  upon  the  working  life  of  the  age 
than  it  had  upon  its  games  and  pastimes  and  the  af- 
fairs of  nations  and  peoples  long  since  passed  away. 
Yet  Rugby  belonged  to  a  group  of  schools  that  were 
admittedly  the  best,  and  certainly  the  most  outrage- 
ously costly,  of  the  educational  establishments  of  the 
period. 

I  think  my  sister  Lucy  was  more  shocked  than  any 
one  else  by  the  death  of  our  father.  I  say  shocked, 
because  I  am  not  certain  whether  or  not  the  word 
grieved  would  apply  accurately.  For  one  thing,  Lucy 
had  never  before  seen  any  dead  person.  Neither 
had  I,  for  that  matter;  but  Lucy  was  more  affected 

7 


THE    MESSAGE 

by  the  actual  presence  in  the  house  of  Death,  than  I 
was.  Twice  a  day  for  years  she  had  kissed  our 
father's  forehead.  Now  and  again  she  had  sat  upon 
the  arm  of  his  chair  and  stroked  his  thin  hair.  These 
demonstrations  were  connected,  I  believe,  with  the 
quest  of  favours  —  permission,  money,  and  so  forth ; 
but  doubtless  affection  played  a  part  in  them. 

As  for  Lucy's  home  life,  a  little  conversation  I  re- 
call on  the  occasion  of  her  driving  me  to  the  station 
when  I  was  leaving  for  what  proved  my  last  term  at 
Cambridge,  seems  to  me  to  throw  some  light.  I  had 
but  recently  learned  of  Lucy's  engagement  to  marry 
Doctor  Woodthrop,  of  Davenham  Minster,  our  near- 
est market-town.  I  had  found  Woodthrop  a  decent 
fellow  enough,  but  thirty-four  as  against  Lucy's 
twenty-one,  inclining  ominously  to  corpulence,  and  as 
flatly  prosaic  and  unadventurous  a  spirit  as  a  small 
country  town  could  produce.  Now,  as  Lucy  seemed 
to  me  to  have  hankerings  in  the  direction  of  social 
pleasures  and  the  like,  with  a  penchant  for  brilliancy 
and  daring,  I  was  a  little  puzzled  about  her  engage- 
ment, for  Woodthrop  was  one  who  kept  a  few  conver- 
sational pleasantries  on  hand,  as  a  man  keeps  old 
pipes  on  a  rack,  for  periodical  use  at  suitable  times. 

"  So  you  are  actually  going  to  be  married,  Loo  ?  '"' 
I  said. 

"  Oh,  well,  engaged,  Dick,"  she  replied,  with  a 
little  blush. 

"  With  a  view,  I  presume.  Then  I  suppose  it 
follows  that  you  are  in  love  —  h'm  ?  " 

"  Why,  Dick,  what  a  cross-examiner  you  are ! " 
The  blush  increased. 

8 


IN    THE    MAKING 

"  Well,  my  dear  girl,  surely  it's  a  natural  assump- 
tion, is  it  not?  " 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  so.    But " 

"Yes?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  think  in  real  life  it's  the  same  thing 
that  you  read  about  in  novels,  do  you,  Dick  ?  " 

"  What?     Being  in  love?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  perhaps  not ;  but  I  imagine  it  ought  to  be 
something  pretty  pronounced,  you  know,  even  in  such 
a  pale  reflection  of  the  novels  as  real  life.  I  gather 
that  it  ought  to  be;  seriously,  Loo,  I  think  it  ought 
to  be.  I  suppose  you  do  love  Woodthrop,  don't  you  ?  " 

My  sister  looked  a  little  distressed,  and  I  half- 
regretted  having  put  so  direct  a  question.  I  was 
sufficiently  the  product  of  my  day  to  be  terribly 
afraid  of  any  kind  of  interference  with  my  fellow 
creatures.  Our  apotheosis  of  individual  liberty  had 
made  any  such  action  anathema,  "  bad  form,"  a  sin 
more  resented  in  the  sinner  than  cowardice  or  dishon- 
esty, or  than  any  kind  of  wickedness  which  was 
strictly  personal  and,  as  you  might  say,  self-con- 
tained. Our  one  object  of  universal  reverence  and 
respect  was  the  personal  equation. 

"  There,  Loo,"  I  said,  "  I  didn't  mean  to  tease 
you."  Thus,  in  accordance  with  my  traditions,  I 
brushed  aside  and  apologized  for  my  natural  interest 
in  her  well-being  in  the  same  way  that  my  poor  father 
and  his  like  brushed  away  all  matters  of  topical  im- 
port, and  the  average  man  of  the  period  brushed 
aside  all  concern  with  his  fellow  men,  all  responsibility 
for  the  common  weal. 

9 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  I  know  you  didn't.  And,  indeed, 
Dick,  I  suppose  I  don't  love  Herbert  as  well  as  I 
ought;  but  —  but,  Dick,  you  don't  know  what  it  is 
to  be  a  girl.  You  can  go  off  to  Cambridge,  and  pres- 
ently you  will  go  out  into  the  world  and  live  your 
own  life  in  your  own  way.  But  it's  different  for  me, 
Dick.  A  girl  is  not  supposed  to  want  to  live  her  own 

life;  she  is  just  part  of  the  home,  and  the  home . 

Well,  Dick,  you  know  father's  life,  and  mother  — 
poor  mother " 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  that's  so." 

"  Well,  Dick,  I'm  afraid  it  seems  pretty  selfish,  but 
I  do  want  to  live  my  own  way,  and  I  do  get  terribly 
tired  of  —  of " 

"  Of  the  *  servant  question,'  for  instance." 

"  Exactly." 

"  And  you  think  you  can  live  your  own  life  with 
Woodthrop?" 

"  Why,  I  think  he  is  very  kind  and  good,  Dick, 
and  he  says  there's  no  reason  why  I  shouldn't  hunt, 
if  I  can  manage  with  one  mount,  and  we  can  have 
friends  of  mine  to  stay,  and  —  and  so  on." 

"  Yes,  I  see.     You  will  be  mistress  of  a  house." 

"  And,  of  course,  I  like  him  very  much,  Dick ;  he 
really  is  good." 

"  Yes." 

That  was  how  Lucy  felt  about  her  marriage. 
There  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  good  deal  lacking;  but 
then  I  was  rather  given  to  concentrating  my  attention 
upon  flaws  and  gaps.  And  when  I  was  next  at  home, 
at  the  time  of  my  father's  death,  I  could  not  help 
feeling  that  the  engagement  was  something  to  be 

10 


IN    THE    MAKING 

thankful  for.  A  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  would 
mean  a  good  deal  of  pinching  for  my  mother  alone, 
as  things  went  then;  but  for  mother  and  Lucy  to- 
gether it  would  have  been  painfully  short  commons. 
Life,  even  in  the  country,  was  an  expensive  business 
at  that  time  despite  the  current  worship  of  cheapness 
and  of  "  free "  trade,  as  our  Quixotic  fiscal  policy 
was  called.  The  sum  total  of  our  wants  and  fancied 
wants  had  been  climbing  steadily,  while  our  individual 
capability  in  domestic  and  other  simple  matters  had 
been  on  the  decline  for  a  long  while. 

In  the  end  we  decided  that  my  mother  and  Lucy 
should  establish  themselves  in  apartments  on  the  out- 
skirts of  Davenham  Minster,  which  apartments  would 
serve  my  mother  permanently,  with  the  relinquishment 
of  a  single  room  after  Lucy's  marriage.  I  saw  them 
both  established,  gathered  my  few  personal  belong- 
ings in  a  trunk  and  a  couple  of  bags,  and  started  for 
London  on  a  brilliantly  fine  morning  toward  the  end 
of  June. 

At  that  time  a  young  man  went  to  London  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  when  launching  out  for  himself.  It  was 
not  that  folk  liked  living  in  the  huge  city  (though, 
curiously  enough,  many  did),  but  they  gravitated 
toward  it  because  the  great  aim,  always,  and  in  those 
conditions  necessarily,  was  to  make  money.  There 
was  more  money  "  knocking  about,"  so  people  said, 
in  London  than  anywhere  else ;  so  that  was  the  place 
for  which  one  made. 

I  started  for  London  with  a  capital  of  precisely 
eleven  guineas  over  and  above  my  railway  fare  — 
and  left  it  again  on  the  same  day. 

11 


II 

AT  THE  WATER'S  EDGE 

"  Now  a  little  before  them,  there  was  on  the  left-hand  of  the 
Road,  a  Meadow,  and  a  Stile  to  go  over  into  it,  and  that  Meadow 
is  called  By -Path-Meadow."  —  The  Pilgrim's  Progress. 

MY  friend,  Leslie  Wheeler,  had  left  Cambridge 
a  few  months  before  my  summons  home,  in 
order  to  enter  his  father's  office  in  Moorgate  Street. 
His  father  was  of  the  mysteriously  named  tribe  of 
"  financial  agents,"  and  had  evidently  found  it  a 
profitable  calling. 

As  I  never  understood  anything  of  even  the  nomen- 
clature of  finance,  I  will  not  attempt  to  describe  the 
business  into  which  my  friend  had  been  absorbed ;  but 
I  remember  that  it  afforded  occupation  for  dozens  of 
gentlemenly  young  fellows,  the  correctness  of  whose 
coiffure  and  general  appearance  was  beyond  praise. 
These  beautifully  groomed  young  gentlemen  sat  upon 
high  stools  at  desks  of  great  brilliancy.  They  used 
an  ingenious  arrangement  of  foolscap  paper  to  pro- 
tect their  shirt-cuffs  from  contact  with  baser  things, 
and  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  evident  care  lavished 
upon  the  disposition  of  their  hair  may  have  been  the 
fact  that  they  made  it  a  point  of  honour  to  go  hatless 
when  taking  the  air  or  out  upon  business  during  the 
day.  Their  general  appearance  and  deportment  in 
the  office  and  outside  always  conveyed  to  me  the 

12 


AT    THE    WATER'S    EDGE 

suggestion  that  they  were  persons  of  some  wealth  and 
infinite  leisure;  but  I  have  been  assured  that  they 
were  hard-working  clerks,  whose  salaries,  even  in  these 
simpler  days,  would  not  be  deemed  extravagant. 
These  salaries,  I  have  been  told,  worked  out  at  an 
average  of  perhaps  £120  or  £130  a  year. 

Now  London  meant  no  more  to  me  at  that  time 
than  a  place  where,  upon  rare  occasions,  one  dined  in 
splendour,  went  to  a  huge  and  gilded  music-hall,  cul- 
tivated a  bad  headache,  and  presently  sought  to  ease 
it  by  eating  a  nightmarish  supper,  and  eating  it 
against  time.  My  allowance  at  Cambridge  had,  no 
doubt  fortunately  for  my  digestion,  allowed  of  but 
few  excursions  to  the  capital ;  but  my  friend  Wheeler 
lived  within  twenty  miles  of  it,  and  I  figured  him 
already  burgeoning  as  a  magnate  of  Moorgate 
Street.  Therefore  I  had  of  course  written  to  him  of 
my  proposed  descent  upon  the  metropolis,  and  had 
been  very  kindly  invited  to  spend  a  week  at  his  father's 
house  in  Weybridge  before  doing  anything  else. 
Accordingly  then,  having  reached  Waterloo  by  a  fast 
train,  I  left  most  of  my  effects  in  the  cloak-room 
there,  and  taking  only  one  bag,  journeyed  down  to 
Weybridge. 

My  friend  welcomed  me  in  person  in  the  hall  of  his 
father's  big  and  rather  showy  house,  he  having  re- 
turned from  the  City  earlier  than  usual  for  that  ex- 
press purpose.  I  had  already  met  his  mother  and  two 
sisters  upon  four  separate  occasions  at  Cambridge. 
Indeed,  I  may  say  that  I  had  almost  corresponded 
with  Leslie's  second  sister,  Sylvia.  At  all  events,  we 
had  exchanged  half  a  dozen  letters,  and  I  had  even 

13 


THE    MESSAGE 

begged,  and  obtained,  a  photograph.  At  Cambridge 
I  thought  I  had  detected  in  this  delicately  pretty, 
soft-spoken  girl,  some  sympathy  and  fellow-feeling  in 
the  matter  of  my  own  crude  gropings  toward  a  philos- 
ophy of  life.  You  may  be  sure  I  did  not  phrase  it  in 
that  way  then.  The  theories  upon  which  my  discon- 
tent with  the  prevailing  order  of  things  was  based, 
seemed  to  me  then  both  strong  and  practical ;  a  little 
ahead  of  my  time  perhaps,  but  far  from  crude  or  un- 
formed. As  I  see  it  now,  my  creed  was  rather  a  pro- 
test against  indifference,  a  demand  for  some  measure 
of  activity  in  social  economy.  That  my  muse  was 
socialistic  seems  to  me  now  to  have  been  mainly  acci- 
dental, but  so  it  was,  and  its  nutriment  had  been 
drawn  largely  from  such  sources  as  Carpenter's  Civi- 
lization: its  Cause  and  Cure,  in  addition  to  the  stand- 
ard works  of  the  Socialist  leaders. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  one  of  the  reasons  of  my 
continued  friendship  with  Leslie  Wheeler  was  the  fact 
that,  in  his  agreeable  manner,  he  represented  in  per- 
son much  of  the  butterfly  indifference  to  what  I  con- 
sidered the  serious  problems  of  life,  against  which  my 
fulminations  were  apt  to  be  directed.  I  may  have 
clung  to  him  instinctively  as  a  wholesome  corrective. 
At  all  events,  he  submitted,  in  the  main  good- 
humouredly,  to  my  frequently  personal  diatribes,  and, 
by  his  very  complaisance  and  merry  indifference,  sup- 
plied me  again  and  again  with  point  and  illustration 
for  my  sermons. 

Leslie's  elder  sister,  Marjory,  was  his  counterpart 
in  petticoats ;  merry,  frivolous,  irresponsible,  devoted 
to  the  chase  of  pleasure,  and  obdurately  bent  upon 

14 


AT   THE    WATER'S    EDGE 

sparing  neither  thought  nor  energy  over  other  inter- 
ests; denying  their  very  existence  indeed,  or  good- 
humouredly  ridiculing  them  when  they  were  forced 
upon  her.  She  was  a  very  handsome  girl ;  I  was  con- 
scious of  that ;  but,  perhaps  because  I  could  not  chal- 
lenge her  as  I  did  her  brother,  her  character  made  no 
appeal  to  me.  But  Sylvia,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
her  big,  spiritual-looking  eyes,  transparently  fair 
skin,  and  earnest,  even  rapt  expression;  Sylvia 
stirred  my  adolescence  pretty  deeply,  and  was  assidu- 
ously draped  by  me  in  that  cloth  of  gold  and  rose- 
leaves  which  every  young  man  is  apt  to  weave  from 
out  of  his  own  inner  consciousness  for  the  persons  of 
those  representatives  of  the  opposite  sex  in  whom  he 
detects  sympathy  and  responsiveness. 

Mrs.  Wheeler  spoke  in  a  kind  and  motherly  way  of 
my  bereavement,  and  the  generosity  of  youth  somehow 
prevented  my  appreciation  of  this  being  dulled  by  the 
fact  that,  until  reminded,  she  had  forgotten  whether  I 
had  lost  a  father  or  a  mother.  Indeed,  though  not 
greatly  interested  in  other  folk's  affairs,  I  believe  that 
while  the  good  soul's  eyes  rested  upon  the  supposed 
sufferer,  or  his  story,  she  was  sincerely  sorry  about 
any  kind  of  trouble,  from  her  pug's  asthma  to  the 
annihilation  of  a  multitude  in  warfare  or  disaster. 
She  had  the  kindest  heart,  and  no  doubt  it  was  rather 
her  misfortune  than  her  fault  that  she  could  not 
clearly  realize  any  circumstance  or  situation  which  did 
not  impinge  in  some  way  upon  her  own  small  circle. 

I  met  Leslie's  father  for  the  first  time  at  dinner 
that  evening.  One  could  hardly  have  imagined  him 
sparing  time  for  visits  to  Cambridge.  He  was  a  fine, 

15 


THE    MESSAGE 

soldierly-looking  man,  with  no  trace  of  City  pallor  in 
his  well-shaven,  purple  cheeks.  Purple  is  hardly  the 
word.  The  ground  was  crimson,  I  think,  and  over 
that  there  was  spread  a  delicate  tracery,  a  sort  of 
netted  film,  of  some  kind  of  blue.  The  eyes  had  a 
glaze  over  them,  but  were  bright  and  searching.  The 
nose  was  a  salient  feature,  having  about  it  a  strong 
predatory  suggestion.  The  forehead  was  low,  sur- 
mounted by  exquisitely  smooth  iron-gray  hair.  Mr. 
Wheeler  was  scrupulously  fine  in  dress,  and  used  a 
single  eye-glass.  He  gave  me  hearty  welcome,  and  I 
prefer  to  think  that  the  apparent  chilling  of  his  atti- 
tude to  me  after  he  had  learned  of  my  financial  cir- 
cumstances was  merely  the  creation  of  some  morbid 
vein  of  hyper-sensitiveness  in  myself. 

At  all  events,  we  were  all  very  jolly  together  that 
evening,  and  I  went  happily  to  bed,  after  what  I 
thought  a  hint  of  responsive  pressure  in  my  hand- 
shake with  Sylvia,  and  several  entertaining  anecdotes 
from  Mr.  Wheeler  as  to  the  manner  in  which  fortunes 
had  been  made  in  the  purlieus  of  Throgmorton  Street. 
Launching  oneself  upon  a  prosperous  career  in  Lon- 
don seemed  an  agreeably  easy  process  at  the  end  of 
that  first  evening  in  the  Wheeler's  home,  and  the 
butterfly  attitude  toward  life  appeared  upon  the  whole 
less  wholly  blameworthy  than  before.  What  a  grace- 
ful fellow  Leslie  was,  and  how  suave  and  genial  the 
father  when  he  sat  at  the  head  of  his  table  toying 
with  a  glass  of  port!  And  these  were  capable  men, 
too,  men  of  affairs.  Doubtless  their  earnestness  was 
strong  enough  below  the  surface,  I  thought  —  for 
that  night. 

16 


Ill 


AN    INTERLUDE 

"  To  observations  which  ourselves  we  make, 
We  grow  more  partial  for  th'  observer's  sake."  —  POPE. 

r  \  CHOUGH  in  no  sense  unfriendly  or  lacking  in 
JL  sympathy,  I  noticed  that  Leslie  Wheeler  showed 
no  inclination  to  be  drawn  into  intimate  discussion  of 
my  prospects.  I  was  not  inclined  to  blame  my  friend 
for  this,  but  told  myself  that  he  probably  acted  upon 
paternal  instructions.  For  me,  however,  it  was  im- 
possible to  lay  aside  for  long,  thoughts  regarding  my 
immediate  future.  I  was  aware  that  a  nest-egg  of 
eleven  or  twelve  pounds  was  not  a  very  substantial 
barrier  between  oneself  and  want.  Mr.  Wheeler  told 
no  more  stories  of  fortunes  built  out  of  nothing  in  the 
City,  but  he  did  take  occasion  to  refer  casually  to  the 
fact  that  City  men  did  not  greatly  care  for  the  prod- 
ucts of  public  schools  and  universities,  as  employees. 
I  was  more  than  half-inclined  to  ask  why,  in  this 
case,  Leslie  had  been  sent  to  Rugby  and  Cambridge, 
but  decided  to  avoid  the  personal  application  of  his 
remark.  It  was,  after  all,  no  more  than  the  expression 
of  a  commonly  accepted  view,  striking  though  it 
seems  as  a  comment  upon  the  educational  system  of 
the  period,  when  one  remembers  the  huge  proportion 
of  the  middle  and  upper-class  populace  which  was  ab- 

17 


THE    MESSAGE 

sorbed    by    commercial    callings    of    one    kind    or 
another. 

There  was  practically  no  demand  for  physical 
prowess  or  aptitude,  outside  the  field  of  sport  and 
games,  nor  even  for  those  qualities  which  are  best 
served  by  a  good  physical  training.  One  need  not, 
therefore,  be  greatly  surprised  that  the  public  schools 
should  have  given  no  physical  training  outside  games, 
and  that  even  of  the  most  perfunctory  character,  the 
majority  qualifying  as  interested  spectators  merely, 
of  the  prowess  of  the  minority.  But  it  certainly  is 
remarkable,  that  no  practical  business  training,  nor 
studies  of  a  sort  calculated  to  be  of  use  in  later  busi- 
ness training,  should  have  been  given  in  the  schools 
most  favoured  by  those  for  whom  business  was  a  life's 
calling.  In  this,  as  in  so  many  other  matters,  I  sup- 
pose we  were  guided  and  directed  entirely  by  habit 
and  tradition;  the  line  of  least  resistance. 

When  I  talked  of  my  prospects  with  handsome 
Leslie  Wheeler  —  his  was  his  father's  face,  unblem- 
ished and  unworn  —  our  conversation  was  always 
three  parts  jocular,  at  all  events  upon  his  side.  I  was 
to  recast  society  and  mould  our  social  system  anew  by 
means  of  my  pen,  and  of  journalism.  I  was  to  pro- 
vide "  the  poor  blessed  poor  "  with  hot-buttered  rolls 
and  devilled  kidneys  for  breakfast,  said  Leslie,  and 
introduce  old-age  pensions  for  every  British  workman 
who  survived  his  twenty-first  birthday. 

I  would  not  be  understood  to  suggest  that  this  sort 
of  f  acetiousness  indicated  the  average  attitude  of  the 
period  with  regard  to  the  horrible  fact  that  the  coun- 
try contained  millions  of  people  permanently  in  a 

18 


AN    INTERLUDE 

state  of  want  and  privation.  But  it  was  a  quite  possi- 
ble attitude  then.  Such  people  as  my  friend  could 
never  have  mocked  the  sufferings  of  an  individual. 
But  with  regard  to  the  state  of  affairs,  the  pitiful 
millions,  as  an  abstract  proposition,  indifference  was 
the  rule,  a  tone  of  light  cynicism  was  customary,  and 
"  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us,"  quoted  with  a 
deprecatory  shrug,  was  an  accepted  conversational 
refuge,  even  among  such  people  as  the  clergy  and 
charitable  workers. 

And  this,  if  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  was  inevitable. 
The  life  and  habits  and  general  attitude  of  the  period 
would  have  been  absolutely  impossible,  in  conjunction 
with  any  serious  face-to-face  consideration  of  a  situa- 
tion which  embraced,  for  example,  such  preposter- 
ously contradictory  elements  as  these: 

The  existence  of  huge  and  growing  armies  of  abso- 
lutely unemployed  men;  the  insistence  of  the  popu- 
lace, and  particularly  the  business  people,  upon  the 
disbandment  of  regiments,  and  upon  great  naval  and 
military  reductions,  involving  further  unemployment; 
the  voting  of  considerable  sums  for  distribution 
among  the  unemployed ;  violent  opposition  to  the 
mere  suggestion  of  State  aid  to  enable  the  unem- 
ployed of  England  to  migrate  to  those  parts  of  the 
Empire  which  actually  needed  their  labour;  the  in- 
creasing difficulty  of  the  problem  which  was  wrapped 
up  in  the  question  of  "  What  to  do  with  our  sons  " ; 
the  absolute  refusal  of  the  nation  to  admit  of  uni- 
versal military  service ;  the  successive  closing  by 
tariff  of  one  foreign  market  after  another  against 
British  manufactures,  and  the  hysterical  refusal  of 

19 


the  people  to  protect  their  own  markets  from  what 
was  graphically  called  the  "  dumping  "  into  them  of 
the  surplus  products  of  other  peoples. 

It  is  a  queer  catalogue,  with  a  ring  of  insanity 
about  it ;  but  these  were  the  merest  commonplaces  of 
life  at  that  time,  and  the  man  who  rebelled  against 
them  was  a  crank.  My  friend  Leslie's  attitude  was 
natural  enough,  therefore;  and,  with  a  few  excep- 
tions, it  was  my  own,  for,  curiously  enough,  the 
political  school  I  favoured  was,  root  and  branch, 
opposed  to  the  only  possible  remedies  for  this  situa- 
tion. Liberals,  Radicals,  Socialists,  and  the  majority 
of  those  who  arrogated  to  themselves  the  title  of 
Social  Reformers ;  these  were  the  people  who  insisted, 
if  not  upon  the  actual  evils  and  sufferings  indicated 
in  this  illustrative  note  of  social  contradictions,  then 
upon  violent  opposition  to  their  complements  in  the 
way  of  mitigation  and  relief.  And  I  was  keenly  of 
their  number. 

Many  of  these  matters  I  discussed,  or  perhaps  I 
should  say,  dilated  upon,  in  conversation  with  Sylvia, 
while  her  brother  and  father  were  in  London.  We 
would  begin  with  racquets  in  the  tennis-court,  and  end 
late  for  some  meal,  after  long  wanderings  among  the 
pines.  And  in  Sylvia,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  I  found  the 
most  delightfully  intelligent  responsiveness,  as  well  as 
sympathy.  My  knowledge  of  feminine  nature,  its 
extraordinary  gifts  of  emotional  and  personal  intui- 
tion, was  of  the  scantiest,  if  it  had  any  existence  at 
all.  But  my  own  emotional  side  was  active,  and  my 
mind  an  inchoate  mass  of  ideals  and  more  or  less 
sentimental  longings  for  social  betterment.  And  so, 

20 


AN    INTERLUDE 

with  Sylvia's  gentle  acquiescence,  I  rearranged  the 
world. 

Much  I  have  forgotten,  and  am  thus  spared  the 
humiliation  of  recounting.  But,  as  an  example  of 
what  I  recall,  I  remember  a  conversation  which  arose 
from  our  passing  a  miniature  rifle-range  which  some 
local  resident  — "  Some  pompous  Jingo  of  retro- 
gressive tendencies,"  I  called  him  —  had  erected  with 
a  view  to  tempting  young  Weybridge  into  marksman- 
ship ;  a  tolerably  forlorn  prospect  at  that  time. 

"  Is  it  not  pathetic,"  I  said,  "  in  twentieth-century 
England,  to  see  such  blatant  attacks  upon  progress 
as  that?  " 

Sylvia  nodded  gravely ;  sweetly  sympathetic  un- 
derstanding, as  I  saw  it.  And,  after  all,  why  not? 
Understanding  of  my  poor  bubbling  mind,  anyhow, 
and  —  Nature's  furnishing  of  young  women's  minds 
is  a  mighty  subtle  business,  not  very  much  more 
clearly  understood  to-day  than  in  the  era  of  knight- 
errantry. 

Sylvia  nodded  gravely,  as  I  spurned  the  turf  by 
the  range. 

"  Here  we  are  surrounded  by  quagmires  of  poverty, 
injustice,  social  anomalies,  and  human  distress,  and 
this  poor  soul  —  a  rich  pork-butcher,  angling  for  the 
favours  of  a  moribund  political  party,  I  dare  say  — 
lavishes  heaven  knows  how  many  pounds  over  an  ar- 
rangement by  which  young  men  are  to  be  taught  how 
to  kill  each  other  with  neatness  and  despatch  at  a  dis- 
tance of  half  a  mile!  It  is  more  tragical  than  farci- 
cal. It  is  enough  to  make  one  despair  of  one's 
fellow  countrymen,  with  their  silly  bombast  about 

21 


THE    MESSAGE 

*  Empire,'  and  their  childish  waving  of  flags.  '  Em- 
pire,' indeed ;  God  save  the  mark !  And  our  own  little 
country  groaning,  women  and  children  wailing,  for 
some  measure  of  common-sense  internal  reform !  " 

"  It  is  dreadful,  dreadful,"  said  Sylvia.  My  heart 
leapt  out  to  meet  the  gentle  goodness  of  her.  "  But 
still,  I  suppose  there  must  be  soldiers,"  she  added. 
Of  course,  this  touched  me  off  as  a  spark  applied  to 
tinder. 

"  But  that  is  just  the  whole  crux  of  the  absurdity, 
and  as  long  as  so  unreal  a  notion  is  cherished  we  can 
never  be  freed  from  the  slavery  of  these  huge  arma- 
ments. Soldiers  are  only  necessary  if  war  is  neces- 
sary, and  war  can  only  be  necessary  while  men  are 
savages.  The  differences  between  masters  and  men 
are  far  more  vital  and  personal  than  the  differences 
between  nations ;  yet  they  have  long  passed  the  crude 
stage  of  thirsting  for  each  other's  destruction  as  a 
means  of  settling  quarrels.  War  is  a  relic  of  bar- 
barous days.  So  long  as  armies  are  maintained, 
unscrupulous  politicians  will  wage  war.  If  we,  who 
call  ourselves  the  greatest  nation  in  Christendom, 
would  even  deserve  the  credit  of  plain  honesty,  we 
must  put  away  savagery,  and  substitute  boards  of 
arbitration  for  armies  and  navies." 

"  Yes,  I  see,"  said  Sylvia,  her  face  alight  with 
interest,  "  I  feel  that  must  be  the  true,  the  Christian 
view.  But  suppose  the  other  nations  would  not  agree 
to  arbitration  ?  " 

"  But  there  is  not  a  doubt  they  would.  Can  you 
suppose  that  any  people  are  so  insensate  as  really  to 

22 


AN    INTERLUDE 

like  war,  carnage,  slaughter,  for  their  own  sake,  when 
peaceful  alternatives  are  offered?  " 

"  No,  I  suppose  not ;    and,  indeed,  I  feel  that  all 
you  say  is  true,  Mr.  Mordan." 

"  Please  don't  say  *  Mr.  Mordan,'  Sylvia.  Even 
your  mother  and  sister  call  me  Dick.  No,  no,  the 
other  nations  would  be  only  too  glad  to  follow  our 
lead,  and  we,  as  the  greatest  Power,  should  take  that 
lead.  What  could  their  soldiers  do  to  a  soldierless 
people,  anyhow ;  and  even  if  we  lost  at  the  beginning, 
why,  '  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole 
world  and  lose  his  own  soul?  '  Of  what  use  is  the 
dominion  of  a  huge,  unwieldy  empire  when  even  a  tiny 
country  like  this  is  so  administered  that. a  quarter  of 
its  population  live  always  on  the  verge  of  starvation? 
Let  the  Empire  go,  let  Army  and  Navy  go,  let  us  con- 
centrate our  energies  upon  the  arts  of  peace,  science, 
education,  the  betterment  of  the  conditions  of  life 
among  the  poor,  the  right  division  of  the  land  among 
those  that  will  till  it.  Let  us  do  that,  and  the  world 
would  have  something  to  thank  us  for,  and  we  should 
soon  hear  the  last  of  these  noisy,  ranting  idiots  who 
are  eternally  waving  flags  like  lunatics  and  mouthing 
absurd  phrases  about  imperialism  and  patriotism, 
national  destiny,  and  rubbish  of  that  sort.  Our  duty 
is  to  humanity,  and  not  to  any  decayed  symbols  of 
feudalism.  The  talk  of  patriotism  and  imperialism 
is  a  gigantic  fraud,  and  the  tyranny  of  it  makes  our 
names  hated  throughout  the  world.  We  have  no 
right  to  enforce  our  sway  upon  the  peace-loving 
farmers  and  the  ignorant  blacks  of  South  Africa. 
They  rightly  hate  us  for  it,  and  so  do  the  millions 

23 


THE    MESSAGE 

of  India,  upon  whom  our  yoke  is  held  by  armies  of 
soldiers  who  have  to  be  maintained  by  their  victims. 
It  casts  one  down  to  think  of  it,  just  as  the  sight  of 
those  ridiculous  rifle-butts  and  the  thought  of  the 
diseased  sentiment  behind  them  depresses  one." 

"  It  all  seems  very  mad  and  wrong,  but  —  but  I 
wish  you  would  not  take  it  so  much  to  heart,"  said 
Sylvia. 

"  That  is  very  sweet  of  you,"  I  told  her ;  "  and, 
indeed,  there  is  not  so  much  real  cause  to  be  down- 
hearted. The  last  elections  showed  clearly  enough 
that  the  majority  of  our  people  are  alive  to  all  this. 
The  leaven  of  enlightenment  is  working  strongly 
among  the  people,  and  the  old  tyranny  of  Jingoism 
is  dying  fast.  One  sees  it  in  a  hundred  ways.  Boer 
independence  has  as  warm  friends  in  our  Parliament 
as  on  the  veld.  The  rising  movements  of  interna- 
tionalism, of  Pan-Islam,  the  Swadeshi  movement,  the 
rising  toward  freedom  in  India ;  all  these  are  largely 
directed  from  Westminster.  The  Jingo  sentiment 
toward  Germany,  a  really  progressive  nation,  full  of 
natural  and  healthy  ambitions,  is  being  swept  away 
by  our  own  statesmen ;  by  their  courteous  and 
friendly  attitude  toward  the  Kaiser,  who  delights  to 
honour  our  present  Minister  of  War.  Also,  the  work 
of  disarmament  has  begun.  The  naval  estimates  are 
being  steadily  ^pruned,  and  whole  regiments  have  been 
finally  disbanded.  And  all  this  comes  from  within. 
So  you  see  we  have  some  grounds  for  hopefulness.  It 
is  a  great  step  forward,  for  our  own  elected  leaders 
to  show  the  enthusiastic  and  determined  opposition 
they  are  showing  to  the  old  brutal  p  retentions  of 


AN    INTERLUDE 

England  to  sway  the  world  by  brute  strength.  But, 
forgive  me !  Perhaps  I  tire  you  with  all  this  — 
Sylvia." 

"  No,  no,  indeed  you  don't  —  Dick,  I  —  I  think  it 
is  beautiful.  It  —  it  seems  to  make  everything  big- 
ger, more  kind  and  good.  It  interests  me,  immensely." 

And  I  knew  perfectly  well  that  I  had  not  tired  her 
—  wearisome  though  the  recital  of  it  all  may  be  now. 
For  I  knew  instinctively  how  the  personal  note  told  in 
the  whole  matter.  I  had  been  really  heated,  and  per- 
fectly sincere,  bait  a  kind  of  subconscious  cunning 
had  led  me  to  utilize  the  heat  of  the  moment  in  intro- 
ducing between  us,  for  example,  the  use  of  first  names. 
Well  I  knew  that  I  was  not  wearying  Sylvia.  But 
coldly  recited  now,  I  admit  the  rhodomontade  to  be 
exceedingly  tiresome.  My  excuse  for  it  is  that  it 
serves  to  indicate  the  sort  of  ideas  that  were  abroad 
at  the  time,  the  sort  of  sentiments  which  were  shaping 
our  destiny. 

After  all,  I  was  an  educated  youth.  Many  of  my 
hot  statements,  too,  were  of  fact,  and  not  merely  of 
opinion  and  feeling.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  sentiment 
called  anti-British  had  come  to  be  served  more  sla- 
vishly in  England  than  in  any  foreign  land.  The 
duration  of  our  disastrous  war  in  South  Africa  was 
positively  doubled,  as  the  result  of  British  influence, 
by  Boer  hopes  pinned  upon  the  deliberate  utterances 
of  British  politicians.  In  Egypt,  South  Africa, 
India,  and  other  parts  of  the  Empire,  all  opposition 
to  British  rule,  all  risings,  attacks  upon  our  prestige, 
and  the  like,  were  aided,  and  in  many  cases  fomented, 
steered,  and  brought  to  a  successful  issue  —  not  by 

25 


THE    MESSAGE 

Germans  or  other  foreigners,  but  by  Englishmen,  and 
by  Englishmen  who  had  sworn  allegiance  at  St.  Ste- 
phens. It  is  no  more  than  a  bare  statement  of  fact 
to  say  that,  in  the  very  year  of  my  arrival  in  London, 
the  party  which  ruled  the  State  was  a  party  whose 
members  openly  avowed  and  boasted  of  their  oppo- 
sition to  British  dominion,  and  that  in  terms,  not  less, 
but  far  more  sweeping  than  mine  in  talking  to  Sylvia 
among  the  pines  at  Weybridge. 

But  if  Sylvia  appreciated  and  sympathized  in  the 
matter  of  my  sermonizing,  the  rest  of  the  family 
neither  approved  the  sermons  nor  Sylvia's  interest  in 
them.  I  was  made  to  feel  in  various  ways  that  no 
import  must  be  attached  to  my  attentions  to  Sylvia. 
Marjory  began  to  shadow  her  sister  in  the  daytime, 
and,  as  she  was  frankly  rather  bored  by  me,  I  could 
not  but  detect  the  parental  will  in  this. 

Then  with  regard  to  my  social  and  political  views, 
Mr.  Wheeler  joined  with  his  son  in  openly  deriding 
them.  In  Leslie's  case  the  thing  never  went  beyond 
friendly  banter.  Leslie  had  no  political  opinions ;  he 
laughed  joyously  at  the  mere  notion  of  bothering  his 
head  about  such  matters  for  a  moment.  And,  in  his 
way,  he  represented  an  enormous  section  of  the 
younger  generation  of  Englishmen  in  this.  The 
father,  on  the  other  hand,  was  equally  typical  of  his 
class  and  generation.  This  was  how  he  talked  to  me 
over  his  port :  — 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  you  know,  Mordan ;  you're 
a  regular  firebrand,  you  know ;  by  Jove,  you  are ;  an 
out-and-out  Socialistic  Radical:  that's  what  you  are. 
By  gad,  sir,  I  don't  mince  my  words.  I  consider  that 

26 


AN    INTERLUDE 

—  er  —  opinions  like  yours  are  a  danger  to  the  coun- 
try ;  I  do,  indeed ;  a  danger  to  the  country,  and  — 
er  —  to  the  —  to  the  Empire.  I  do,  by  gad.  And 
as  for  your  notions  about  disarmament  and  that,  why, 
even  if  our  army  reductions  are  justifiable,  which, 
upon  my  word,  I  very  much  doubt,  it's  ridiculous  to 
suppose  we  can  afford  to  cut  down  our  Navy.  No, 
sir,  the  British  Navy  is  Britain's  safeguard,  and  it 
ought  not  to  be  tampered  with.  I'm  an  out-and-out 
Imperialist  myself,  and  —  er  —  I  can  tell  you  I  have 
no  patience  with  your  Little  Englandism." 

I  am  not  at  all  sure  whether  the  class  Mr.  Wheeler 
belonged  to  was  not  almost  the  most  dangerous  class 
of  all.  The  recent  elections  showed  this  class  to  be  a 
minority.  Of  course,  this  section  had  its  strong  men, 
but  that  it  also  included  a  large  number  of  men  like 
Leslie's  father  was  a  fact  —  a  fact  which  yielded 
pitiful  evidence  of  its  weakness.  These  men  called 
themselves  "  out-and-out  Imperialists,"  and  had  not  a 
notion  of  even  the  meaning  of  the  word  they  used. 
Still  less  had  they  any  notion  of  accepting  any  role 
which  involved  the  bearing  of  responsibilities,  the  dis- 
charge of  civic  and  national  duties. 

Mr.  Wheeler's  aim  in  life  was  to  make  money  and 
to  enjoy  himself.  He  would  never  have  exercised  his 
right  to  vote  if  voting  had  involved  postponing  din- 
ner. He  liked  to  talk  of  the  British  Empire,  but  he 
did  not  even  know  precisely  of  what  countries  it  con- 
sisted, and  I  think  he  would  cheerfully  have  handed 
Canada  to  France,  Australia  to  Germany,  India  to 
Russia,  and  South  Africa  to  the  Boers,  if  by  so  doing 
he  could  have  escaped  the  paying  of  income-tax. 

27 


THE    MESSAGE 

On  Sunday  night,  my  last  night  at  Weybridge,  I 
walked  home  from  church  alone  with  Sylvia.  Mar- 
jory was  in  bed  with  a  sore  throat,  and  whatever  their 
notions  as  to  my  undesirability,  neither  Mr.  nor  Mrs. 
Wheeler  were  inclined  to  attend  evening  service. 
Leslie  was  not  home  from  golf  at  Byfleet.  We  were 
late  for  dinner,  Sylvia  and  I,  and  during  our  walk 
she  promised  to  write  to  me  regularly,  and  I  prom- 
ised many  things,  and  suggested  many  things,  and 
was  only  deterred  from  actual  declaration  by  the 
thought  of  the  poor  little  sum  which  stood  between 
me  and  actual  want. 

Next  morning  I  went  up  to  town  with  Leslie  and  his 
father  to  open  my  campaign  in  London.  As  a  first 
step  toward  procuring  work,  I  was  to  present  a  letter 
of  introduction  from  a  Cambridge  friend  to  the  editor 
of  the  Daily  Gazette.  After  that,  as  Leslie  said,  I 
was  to  "  reform  England  inside  out." 


IV 


THE    LAUNCHING 

"  O  Friend  !  1  know  not  which  way  I  must  look 
For  comfort,  being,  as  I  am,  opprest 
To  think  that  now  our  life  is  only  drest 
For  show  ;  mean  handi-work  of  craftsman,  cook, 
Or  groom  !  —  We  must  run  glittering  like  a  brook 
In  the  open  sunshine,  or  we  are  unblest ; 
The  wealthiest  man  among  us  is  the  best  ; 
No  grandeur  now  in  Nature  or  in  book 
Delight  us.     .     .     . "  — WORDSWORTH. 

LOOKING  back  now  upon  that  lonely  launch  of 
mine  in  London,  I  see  a  very  curious  and  sombre 
picture.  In  the  living  I  am  sure  there  must  have  been 
mitigations,  and  light  as  well  as  shade.  In  the  retro- 
spect it  seems  one  long  disillusion.  I  see  myself,  and 
the  few  folk  with  whom  my  relations  were  intimate, 
struggling  like  ants  across  a  grimy  stage,  in  the  midst 
of  an  inferno  of  noise,  confusion,  pointless  turmoil, 
squalor,  and  ultimate  cataclysm.  The  whole  picture 
is  lurid,  superhuman  in  its  chaotic  gloom;  but  in  the 
living,  I  know  there  were  gleams  of  sunlight.  The 
tragic  muddle  of  that  period  was  so  monstrous,  that 
even  we  who  lived  through  it  are  apt  in  retrospect  to 
see  only  the  gloom  and  confusion.  It  is  natural, 
therefore,  that  those  who  did  not  live  through  it 
should  be  utterly  unable  to  discern  any  glimpse  of 

29 


THE    MESSAGE 

relief  in  the  picture.  And  that  leads  to  misconcep- 
tion. 

As  a  fact,  I  found  very  much  to  admire  in  London 
when  I  sallied  forth  from  the  obscure  lodging  I  had 
chosen  in  a  Bloomsbury  back  street,  on  the  morning 
which  brought  an  end  to  my  stay  with  the  Wheelers 
at  Weybridge.  Also,  it  was  not  given  to  me  at  that 
time  to  recognize  as  such  one  tithe  of  the  madness  and 
badness  of  the  state  of  affairs.  Some  wholly  bad 
features  were  quite  good  in  my  eyes  then. 

London  still  clung  to  its  "  season,"  as  it  was  called, 
though  motor-cars  and  railway  facilities  had  entirely 
robbed  this  of  its  sharply  defined  nineteenth-century 
limits.  Very  many  people,  even  among  the  wealthy, 
lived  entirely  in  London,  spending  their  week-ends  in 
this  or  that  country  or  seaside  resort,  and  devoting 
the  last  months  of  summer  with,  in  many  cases,  the 
first  months  of  autumn,  to  holiday-making  on  the 
Continent,  or  in  Scotland,  or  on  the  English  moors  or 
coasts. 

The  London  season  was  not  over  when  I  reached 
town,  and  in  the  western  residential  quarters  the  sun 
shone  brightly  upon  many-coloured  awnings  and 
beautiful  decorative  plants  and  flowers.  The  annual 
rents  paid  by  people  who  lived  behind  these  flowers 
and  awnings  frequently  ran  into  thousands  of  pounds, 
with  ten  shillings  in  each  pound  additional  by  way  of 
rates  and  taxes.  To  live  at  all,  in  this  strata,  would 
cost  a  man  and  his  wife  perhaps  eighty  to  a  hundred 
pounds  a  week,  without  anything  which  would  have 
been  called  extravagance. 

Hundreds  of  people  who  lived  in  this  way  had 
30 


THE    LAUNCHING 

neighbours  within  a  hundred  yards  of  their  front 
doors  who  never  had  enough  to  eat.  Even  such  peo- 
ple as  these  had  to  pay  preposterous  rents  for  the 
privilege  of  huddling  together  in  a  single  wretched 
room.  But  many  of  their  wealthy  neighbours  spent 
hundreds,  and  even  thousands  of  pounds  a  year  over 
securing  comfort  and  happiness  for  such  domestic 
animals  as  horses,  dogs,  cats,  and  the  like.  Amiable, 
kindly  gentlefolk  they  were,  with  tender  hearts  and 
ready  sympathies.  Most  of  them  were  interested  in 
some  form  of  charity.  Many  of  them  specialized,  and 
these  would  devote  much  energy  to  opposing  the  work 
of  other  charitable  specialists.  Lady  So-and-so,  who 
advocated  this  panacea,  found  herself  bitterly  op- 
posed by  Sir  So-and-so,  who  wanted  all  sufferers  to 
be  made  to  take  his  nostrum  in  his  special  way.  Then 
sometimes  poor  Lady  So-and-so  would  throw  up  her 
panacea  in  a  huff,  and  concentrate  her  energies  upon 
the  work  of  some  society  for  converting  Jews,  who  did 
not  want  to  be  converted,  or  for  supplying  red  flannel 
petticoats  for  South  Sea  Island  girls,  who  infinitely 
preferred  cotton  shifts  and  floral  wreaths.  Even 
these  futile  charities  were  permitted  to  overlap  one 
another  to  a  bewilderingly  wasteful  extent. 

But  the  two  saddest  aspects  of  the  whole  gigantic 
muddle  so  far  as  charitable  work  went,  were  un- 
doubtedly these:  The  fact  that  much  of  it  went  to 
produce  a  class  of  men  and  women  who  would  not  do 
any  kind  of  work  because  they  found  that  by  judi- 
cious sponging  they  could  live  and  obtain  alcohol  and 
tobacco  in  idleness ;  and  the  fact  that  where  charita- 
ble endeavour  infringed  upon  vested  interests,  licit  or 


THE    MESSAGE 

illicit,  it  was  savagely  opposed  by  the  persons  inter- 
ested. 

The  discipline  of  the  national  schools  was  slack, 
intermittent,  and  of  short  reach.  There  was  posi- 
tively no  duty  to  the  State  which  a  youth  was  bound 
to  observe.  Broadly,  it  might  be  said  that  at  that 
time  discipline  simply  did  not  enter  at  all  into  the  life 
of  the  poor  of  the  towns,  and  charity  of  every  con- 
ceivable and  inconceivable  kind  did  enter  into  it  at 
every  turn. 

The  police  service  was  excellent  and  crime  exceed- 
ingly difficult  of  accomplishment.  The  inevitable  re- 
sult was  the  evolution  in  the  towns  of  a  class  of  men 
and  women,  but  more  especially  of  men,  who,  though 
compact  of  criminal  instincts  of  every  kind,  yet  com- 
mitted no  offence  against  criminal  law.  They  com- 
mitted nothing.  They  simply  lived,  drinking  to 
excess  when  possible,  determined  upon  one  point  only : 
that  they  never  would  do  anything  which  could  possi- 
bly be  called  work.  It  is  obvious  that  among  such 
people  the  sense  of  duty  either  to  themselves,  to  each 
other,  or  to  the  State,  was  merely  non-existent. 

London  had  long  since  earned  the  reputation  of 
being  the  most  charitable  city  in  the  world.  Its  share 
in  the  production  of  an  immense  loafer  class  formed 
one  sad  aspect  of  London's  charity  when  I  first  came 
to  know  the  city.  Another  was  the  opposition  of 
vested  interests  —  the  opposition  of  the  individual  to 
the  welfare  of  the  mass.  One  found  it  everywhere.  An 
instance  I  call  to  mind  (it  happened  to  be  brought 
sharply  home  to  me)  struck  at  the  root  of  the  terribly 
rapid  production  of  degenerates,  by  virtue  of  its  rela- 

32 


THE    LAUNCHING 

tion  to  pauper  children  —  that  is,  the  children  to 
whom  the  State,  through  its  boards  of  guardians, 
stood  in  the  light  of  parents,  because  their  natural 
parents  were  dead,  or  in  prison,  or  in  lunatic  asy- 
lums, or  hopelessly  far  gone  in  the  state  of  criminal 
inactivity  which  qualified  so  many  for  all  three  estates. 

Huge  institutions  were  built  at  great  expense  for 
the  accommodation  of  these  little  unfortunates.  Here 
they  were  housed  in  the  most  costly  manner,  the  whole 
work  of  the  establishment  being  carried  on  by  a 
highly  paid  staff  of  servants  and  officials.  The  chil- 
dren were  not  allowed  to  do  anything  at  all,  beyond 
the  learning  by  rote  of  various  theories  which  there 
was  no  likelihood  of  their  ever  being  able  to  apply  to 
any  reality  of  life  with  which  they  would  come  in 
contact. 

They  listened  to  lectures  on  the  making  of  dainty 
dishes  in  the  best  style  of  French  cookery,  and  in 
many  cases  they  never  saw  a  box  of  matches.  They 
learned  to  repeat  poetry  as  parrots  might,  but  did 
not  know  the  difference  between  shavings  and  raw 
coffee.  They  learned  vague  smatterings  of  Roman 
history,  but  did  not  know  how  to  clean  their  boots  or 
brush  their  hair.  It  was  as  though  experts  had  been 
called  upon  to  devise  a  scheme  whereby  children  might 
be  reared  into  their  teens  without  knowing  that  they 
were  alive  or  where  they  lived,  and  this  with  the  great- 
est possible  outlay  of  money  per  child.  Then,  at  a 
given  age,  these  children  were  put  outside  the  massive 
gates  of  the  institutions  and  told  to  run  away  and 
become  good  citizens. 

It  followed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  most  of  them 
SB 


THE    MESSAGE 

fell  steadily  and  rapidly  into  the  pit ;  the  place  occu- 
pied by  the  criminally  inactive,  the  "  public-house 
props."  So  they  returned  poor,  heavy-laden  crea- 
tures, by  way  of  charity,  to  the  institutions  of  the 
"  rates,"  thus  completing  the  vicious  circle  of  life 
forced  upon  them  by  an  incredibly  wrong-headed, 
topsyturvy  administration. 

For  the  maintenance  of  this  vicious  circle  enormous 
sums  of  public  money  were  required.  Failing  such 
vast  expenditure,  Nature  unaided  would  have  righted 
matters  to  some  extent,  and  the  Poor  Law  guardians 
would  have  become  by  so  much  the  less  wielders  of 
power  and  influence,  dispensers  of  public  money. 
Some  of  these  Poor  Law  guardians  gave  up  more  or 
less  honest  trades  to  take  to  Poor  Law  guardianship 
as  a  business ;  and  they  waxed  fat  upon  it. 

Every  now  and  again  came  disclosures.  Guardians 
were  shown  to  have  paid  ten  shillings  a  score  for  such 
and  such  a  commodity  this  year,  and  next  year  to  have 
refused  a  tender  for  the  supply  of  the  same  article 
at  9s.  8d.  a  score,  in  favour  of  the  tender  of  a  relative 
or  protege  of  one  of  their  number  at  109s.  8d.  a  score. 
I  remember  the  newspapers  showing  up  such  cases  as 
these  during  the  week  of  my  arrival  in  London.  The 
public  read  and  shrugged  shoulders. 

"  Rascally  thieves,  these  guardians,"  said  the  Pub- 
lic ;  and  straightway  forgot  the  whole  business  in  the 
rush  of  its  own  crazy  race  for  money. 

"  But,"  cried  the  Reformer  to  the  Public,  "  this  is 
really  your  business.  It  is  your  duty  as  citizens  to 
stop  this  infamous  traffic.  Don't  you  see  how  you 
yourselves  are  being  robbed?  " 

34 


THE    LAUNCHING 

You  must  picture  our  British  Public  of  the  day  as 
a  flushed,  excited  man,  hurrying  wildly  along  in  pur- 
suit of  two  phantoms  —  money  and  pleasure.  These 
he  desired  to  grasp  for  himself,  and  he  was  being 
furiously  jostled  by  millions  of  his  fellows,  each  one 
of  whom  desired  just  the  same  thing,  and  nothing 
else.  Faintly,  amidst  the  frantic  turmoil,  came  the 
warning  voices  in  the  wilderness: 

"  This  is  your  business.  It  is  your  duty  as  citi- 
zens," etc. 

Over  his  shoulder,  our  poor  possessed  Public  would 
fling  his  answer: 

"  Leave  me  alone.  I  haven't  time  to  attend  to  it. 
I'm  too  busy.  You  mustn't  interrupt  me.  Why  the 
deuce  don't  the  Government  see  to  it?  Lot  of  rascals ! 
Don't  bother  me.  I  represent  commerce,  and,  what- 
ever you  do,  you  must  not  in  any  way  interfere  with 
the  Freedom  of  Trade." 

The  band  of  the  reformers  was  considerable,  em- 
bracing as  it  did  the  better,  braver  sort  of  statesmen, 
soldiers,  sailors,  clergy,  authors,  journalists,  sociolo- 
gists, and  the  whole  brotherhood  of  earnest  thinkers. 
But  the  din  and  confusion  was  frightful,  the  pace  at 
which  the  million  lived  was  terrific ;  and,  after  all, 
the  cries  of  the  reformers  all  meant  the  same  thing, 
the  one  thing  the  great,  sweating  public  was  deter- 
mined not  to  hear,  and  not  to  act  on.  They  all  meant: 

"  Step  out  from  your  race  a  moment.  Your  duties 
are  here.  You  are  passing  them  all  by.  Come  to 
your  duties." 

It  was  like  a  Moslem  call  to  prayer;  but,  alas!  it 
was  directed  at  a  people  who  had  sloughed  all  pre- 
35 


THE    MESSAGE 

tensions  to  be  ranked  among  those  who  respond  to 
such  calls,  to  any  calls  which  would  distract  them 
from  their  objective  in  the  pelting  pursuit  of  money 
and  pleasure. 

But  I  am  digressing  —  the  one  vice  which,  unfor- 
tunately for  us,  we  never  indulged  or  condoned  at  the 
time  of  my  arrival  in  London.  I  wanted  to  give  an 
instance  of  that  aspect  of  charity  and  attempted 
social  reform  which  aroused  the  opposition  of  vested 
interests  and  chartered  brigands  in  the  great  money 
hunt.  It  was  this:  A  certain  charitable  lady  gave 
some  years  of  her  life  to  the  study  of  those  conditions 
in  which,  as  I  have  said,  the  criminally  inactive,  the 
hopelessly  useless,  were  produced  by  authorized  rou- 
tine, at  a  ruinous  cost  in  money  and  degeneracy,  and 
to  the  great  profit  of  an  unscrupulous  few. 

This  lady  then  gave  some  further  years,  not  to 
mention  money,  influence,  and  energy,  to  the  evolution 
of  a  scheme  by  which  these  pauper  children  could 
really  be  made  good  and  independent  citizens,  and 
that  at  an  all-round  cost  of  about  one-fifth  of  the 
price  of  the  guardians'  method  for  converting  them 
into  human  wrecks  and  permanent  charges  upon  the 
State.  The  wise  practicability  of  this  lady's  system 
was  admitted  by  independent  experts,  and  denied  by 
nobody.  But  it  was  swept  aside  and  crushed,  beaten 
down  with  vicious,  angry  thoroughness,  in  one  quarter 
—  the  quarter  of  vested  interest  and  authority ; 
quietly,  passively  discouraged  in  various  other  quar- 
ters ;  and  generally  ignored,  as  another  interrupting 
duty  call,  by  the  rushing  public. 

Here,  then,  were  three  kinds  of  opposition  —  the 
36 


THE    LAUNCHING 

first  active  and  deadly,  the  other  two  passive  and 
fatal,  because  they  withheld  needed  support.  The 
reason  of  the  first,  the  guardians'  opposition,  was 
frankly  and  shamelessly  admitted  in  London  at  the 
time  of  my  arrival  there.  The  guardians  said: 

"  This  scheme  would  reduce  the  rates.  We  want 
more  rates.  It  would  reduce  the  amount  of  money 
at  our  disposal.  We  aim  at  increasing  that.  It  would 
divert  certain  streams  of  cash  from  our  own  channel 
into  other  channels  in  other  parts  of  the  Empire.  We 
won't  have  it."  But  their  words  were  far  less  civil 
and  more  heated  than  these,  though  the  sense  of  them 
was  as  I  have  said. 

The  quiet,  passive  opposition  was  that  of  other 
workers  in  charity  and  reform.  They  said  in  effect: 

"  Yes,  the  scheme  is  all  right  —  an  excellent 
scheme.  But  why  do  you  take  it  upon  yourself  to 
bring  it  forward  in  this  direct  manner?  Are  you  not 

aware  of  the  existence  of  our  B nostrum  for 

pauper  children,  or  our  C —  -  specific  for  juvenile 
emigration  ?  Your  scheme,  admirable  as  it  is,  ignores 
both  these,  and  therefore  you  must  really  excuse  us  if 

we Quite  so !  But,  of  course,  as  co-workers 

in  the  good  cause,  we  wish  you  well ",  and  so 

forth. 

The  opposition  of  the  general  public  I  have  ex- 
plained. It  was  not  really  opposition.  It  was  simply 
a  part  of  the  disease  of  the  period;  the  dropsical, 
fatty  degeneration  of  a  people.  But  the  mere  fact 
that  the  reformers  sent  forth  their  cries  and  still 
laboured  beside  the  public's  crowded  race-course ;  that 
such  people  as  the  lady  I  have  mentioned  existed  — • 

37 


THE    MESSAGE 

and  there  were  many  like  her  —  should  show  that 
London  as  I  found  it  was  not  all  shadow  and  gloom, 
as  it  seems  when  one  looks  back  upon  it  from  the  clear 
light  of  better  days. 

The  darkness,  the  confusion,  and  the  din,  were  not 
easy  to  see  and  hear  through  then.  From  this  dis- 
tance they  are  more  impenetrable;  but  I  know  the 
light  did  break  through  continually  in  places,  and 
good  men  and  women  held  wide  the  windows  of  their 
consciousness  to  welcome  it,  striving  their  utmost  to 
carry  it  into  the  thick  of  the  fight.  Many  broke  their 
hearts  in  the  effort ;  but  there  were  others,  and  those 
who  fell  had  successors.  The  heart  of  our  race  never 
was  of  the  stuff  that  can  be  broken.  It  was  the 
strongest  thing  in  all  that  tumultuous  world  of  my 
youth,  and  I  recall  now  the  outstanding  figures  of 
men  already  gray  and  bowed  by  long  lives  of  strenu- 
ous endeavour,  who  yet  fought  without  pause  at  this 
time  on  the  side  of  those  who  strove  to  check  the  mad, 
blind  flight  of  the  people. 

London,  as  I  entered  it,  was  a  battle-field ;  the  per- 
verse waste  of  human  energy  and  life  was  frightful ; 
but  it  was  not  quite  the  unredeemed  chaos  which  it 
seems  as  we  look  back  upon  it. 

Even  in  the  red  centre  of  the  stampede  (Fleet 
Street  is  within  the  City  boundaries)  men  in  the  race 
took  time  for  the  exercise  of  human  kindliness,  when 
opportunity  was  brought  close  enough  to  them.  The 
letter  I  took  to  the  editor  of  the  Daily  Gazette  was 
from  an  old  friend  of  his  who  knew,  and  told  him,  of 
my  exact  circumstances.  This  gentleman  received  me 
kindly  and  courteously.  He  and  his  like  were  among 

38 


THE    LAUNCHING 

the  most  furiously  hurried  in  the  race,  but  their 
handling  of  great  masses  of  diffuse  information  gave 
them,  in  many  cases,  a  wide  outlook,  and  where,  as 
often  happened,  they  were  well  balanced  as  well  as 
honest,  I  think  they  served  their  age  as  truly  as  any 
of  their  contemporaries,  and  with  more  effect  than 
most. 

This  gentleman  talked  to  me  for  ten  minutes,  dur- 
ing which  time  he  learned  most  of  all  there  was  to 
know  about  my  little  journalistic  and  debating  expe- 
rience at  Cambridge,  and  the  general  trend  of  my 
views  and  purposes.  I  do  not  think  he  particularly 
desired  my  services ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  I  was 
not  an  absolute  ignoramus.  I  had  written  for  publi- 
cation; I  had  enthusiasm;  and  there  was  my  Cam- 
bridge friend's  letter. 

"  Well,  Mr.  Mordan,"  he  said,  turning  toward  a 
table  littered  deep  with  papers,  and  cumbered  with 
telephones  and  bells,  "  I  cannot  offer  you  anything 
very  brilliant  at  the  moment ;  but  I  see  no  reason  why 
you  should  not  make  a  niche  for  yourself.  We  all 
have  to  do  that,  you  know  —  or  drop  out  to  make 
way  for  others.  You  probably  know  that  in  Fleet 
Street,  more  perhaps  than  elsewhere,  the  race  is  to 
the  swift.  There  are  no  reserved  seats.  The  best  I 
can  do  for  you  now  is  to  enter  you  on  the  reporting 
staff.  It  is  stretching  a  point  somewhat  to  make  the 
pay  fifty  shillings  a  week  for  a  beginning.  That  is 
the  best  I  can  do.  Would  you  care  to  take  that  ?  " 

"  Certainly,"  I  told  him ;  "  and  I'm  very  much 
obliged  to  you  for  the  chance." 

"  Right.  Then  you  might  come  in  to-morrow.  I 
39 


THE    MESSAGE 

will  arrange  with  the  news-editor.  And  now " 

He  looked  up,  and  I  took  my  hat.  Then  he  looked 
down  again,  as  though  seeking  something  on  the  floor. 
"  Well,  I  think  that's  all.  Of  course,  it  rests  with  you 
to  make  your  own  place,  or  —  or  lose  it.  I  sympa- 
thize with  what  you  have  told  me  of  your  views  —  of 
course.  You  know  the  policy  of  the  paper.  But  you 
must  remember  that  running  a  newspaper  is  a  com- 
plex business.  One's  methods  cannot  always  be  direct. 
Life  is  made  up  of  compromises,  and  —  er  —  at  times 
a  turn  to  the  left  is  the  shortest  way  to  the  right  — 
er  —  Good  night !  " 

Thus  I  was  given  my  chance  within  a  few  hours  of 
my  descent  upon  the  great  roaring  City.  I  was 
spared  much.  Even  then  I  knew  by  hearsay,  as  I 
subsequently  learned  for  myself,  that  hundreds  of 
men  of  far  wider  experience  and  greater  ability  than 
mine  were  wearily  tramping  London's  pavements  at 
that  moment,  longing,  questing  bitterly  for  work  that 
would  bring  them  half  the  small  salary  I  was  to  earn. 

I  wrote  to  Sylvia  that  night,  from  my  little  room 
among  the  cat-infested  chimney-pots  of  Bloomsbury ; 
and  I  am  sure  my  letter  did  not  suggest  that  London 
was  a  very  gloomy  place.  My  hopes  ran  high. 


THE  ROARING  CITY 


A   JOURNALIST  S    EQUIPMENT 

" .     .     .     Rapine,  avarice,  expense, 
This  is  idolatry  ;  and  these  we  adore  : 
Plain  living  and  high  thinking  are  no  more  : 
The  homely  beauty  of  the  good  old  cause 
Is  gone  ;  our  peace,  our  fearful  innocence, 
And  pure  religion  breathing  household  laws." 

WORDSWORTH. 

ACTING  on  the  instructions  I  had  received  over- 
night, I  presented  myself  at  the  office  of  the 
Daily  Gazette  in  good  time  on  the  morning  after  my 
interview  with  the  editor.  A  pert  boy  showed  me  into 
the  news-editor's  room,  after  an  interval  of  waiting, 
and  I  found  myself  confronting  the  man  who  con- 
trolled my  immediate  destiny.  He  was  dictating  tele- 
grams to  a  shorthand  writer,  and,  for  the  moment, 
took  no  notice  whatever  of  me.  I  stood  at  the  end  of 
his  table,  hat  in  hand,  wondering  how  so  young-look- 
ing a  man  came  to  be  occupying  his  chair. 

He  looked  about  my  age,  but  was  a  few  years  older. 
His  face  was  as  smooth  as  the  head  of  a  new  axe,  and 
had  something  else  chopper-like  about  it.  He  re- 
minded me  of  pictures  I  had  seen  in  the  advertisement 
pages  of  American  magazines ;  pictures  showing  a 
wedge-like  human  face,  from  the  lips  of  which  some 
such  an  assertion  as  "  It's  you  I  want !  "  was  supposed 

41 


THE    MESSAGE 

to  be  issuing.  I  subsequently  learned  that  this  Mr. 
Charles  N.  Pierce  had  spent  several  years  in  New 
York,  and  that  he  was  credited  with  having  largely 
increased  the  circulation  of  the  Daily  Gazette  since 
taking  over  his  present  position.  He  suddenly  raised 
the  even,  mechanical  tone  in  which  he  dictated,  and 
snapped  out  the  words : 

"  Right.  Get  on  with  those  now,  and  come  back  in 
five  minutes." 

Then  he  switched  his  gaze  on  to  me,  like  a  search- 
light. 

"  Mr.  Mordan,  I  believe?  " 

I  admitted  the  charge  with  my  best  smile.  Mr. 
Pierce  ignored  the  smile,  and  said : 

"  University  man?  " 

Accepting  his  cue  as  to  brevity,  I  said :  "  Yes. 
Corpus  Christi,  Cambridge." 

He  pursed  his  thin  lips.  "  Ah  well,"  he  said, 
"  you'll  get  over  that." 

In  his  way  he  was  perfectly  right ;  but  his  way  was 
as  coldly  offensive  as  any  I  had  ever  met  with. 

"  Well,  Mr.  Mordan,  I've  only  three  things  to  say. 
Reports  for  this  paper  must  be  sound  English ;  they 
must  be  live  stories ;  they  must  be  short.  You  might 
ask  a  boy  to  show  you  the  reporters'  room.  You'll 
get  your  assignment  presently.  As  a  day  man,  you'll 
be  here  from  ten  to  six.  That's  all." 

And  his  blade  of  a  face  descended  into  the  heart  of 
a  sheaf  of  papers.  As  I  reached  the  door  the  blade 
rose  again,  to  emit  a  kind  of  thin  bark : 

"Ah!" 

I  turned  on  my  heel,  waiting. 
42 


A    JOURNALIST'S    EQUIPMENT 

"  Do  you  know  anything  about  spelling  ?  " 

I  tried  to  look  pleasant,  as  I  said  I  thought  I  was 
to  be  relied  on  in  this. 

"  Well,  ask  my  secretary  for  tickets  for  the  meet- 
ing at  Memorial  Hall  to-day ;  something  to  do  with 
spelling.  Don't  do  more  than  thirty  or  forty  lines. 
Right." 

And  the  blade  fell  once  more,  leaving  me  free  to 
make  my  escape,  which  I  did  with  a  considerable  sense 
of  relief.  I  found  the  secretary  a  meek  little  clerk, 
with  a  curious  hidden  vein  of  timid  facetiousness.  He 
supplied  me  with  the  necessary  ticket  and  a  hand-bill 
of  particulars.  Then  he  said: 

"  Mr.  Pierce  is  quite  bright  and  pleasant  this  morn- 
ing." 

"  Oh,  is  he?  "   I  said. 

"  Yes,  very  —  for  him.  He's  all  right,  you  know, 
when  you  get  into  his  way.  Of  course,  he's  a  real 
hustler  —  cleverest  journalist  in  London,  they  say." 

"  Really !  "  I  think  I  introduced  the  right  note  of 
admiration.  At  all  events,  it  seemed  to  please  this 
little  pale-eyed  rabbit  of  a  man,  who,  as  I  found  later, 
was  reverentially  devoted  to  his  bullying  chief,  and 
positively  took  a  kind  of  fearful  joy  in  being  more 
savagely  browbeaten  by  Pierce  than  any  other  man 
in  the  building.  A  queer  taste,  but  a  fortunate  one 
for  a  man  in  his  particular  position. 

For  myself,  I  was  at  once  repelled  and  gagged  by 
Pierce's  manner.  I  believe  the  man  had  ability, 
though  I  think  this  was  a  good  deal  overrated  by 
himself,  and  by  others,  at  his  dictation;  and  I  dare 
say  he  was  a  good  enough  fellow  at  heart.  His 

43 


THE    MESSAGE 

manner  was  aggressive  and  feverish  enough  to  be 
called  a  symptom  of  the  disease  of  the  period.  If  the 
blood  in  his  veins  sang  any  song  at  all  to  Mr.  Pierce, 
the  refrain  of  that  song  must  have  been,  "  Hurry, 
hurry,  hurry  !  "  He  and  his  like  never  stopped  to  ask 
"Whither?  "or  "Why?"  They  had  not  time.  And 
further,  if  pressed  for  reasons,  destination,  and  so 
forth,  they  would  have  admitted,  to  themselves  at  all 
events,  that  there  could  be  no  other  goal  than  success ; 
and  that  success  could  mean  no  other  thing  than  the 
acquisition  of  money ;  and  that  the  man  who  thought 
otherwise  must  be  a  fool  —  a  fool  who  would  soon 
drop  out  altogether,  to  go  under,  among  those  who 
were  broken  by  the  way. 

My  general  aim  and  purpose  in  journalistic  work, 
at  the  outset,  was  the  serving  of  social  reform  in 
everything  that  I  did.  As  I  saw  it,  society  was  in  a 
parlous  state  indeed,  and  needed  awaking  to  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact,  to  the  crying  need  for  reforms  in 
every  direction.  That  attitude  was  justifiable  enough 
in  all  conscience.  The  trouble  was  that  I  was  at  fault, 
first,  in  my  diagnosis ;  second,  in  my  notions  as  to 
what  kind  of  remedies  were  required ;  and  third,  as  to 
the  application  of  those  remedies. 

Like  the  rest  of  the  minority  whose  thoughts  were 
not  entirely  occupied  by  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  and 
personal  gain,  I  saw  that  the  greatest  obstacle  in  the 
path  of  the  reformer  was  public  indifference.  But 
with  regard  to  the  causes  of  that  indifference,  I  was 
entirely  astray.  I  clung  still  to  the  nineteenth-cen- 
tury attitude,  which  had  been  justifiable  enough  dur- 
ing a  good  portion  of  that  century,  but  had  absolutely 

44 


A    JOURNALIST'S    EQUIPMENT 

ceased  to  be  justifiable  before  its  end  came.  This  was 
the  attitude  of  demanding  the  introduction  of  re- 
forms from  above,  from  the  State. 

Though  I  fancied  myself  in  advance  of  my  time  in 
thought,  when  I  joined  the  staff  of  the  Daily  Gazette, 
I  really  was  essentially  of  it.  Even  my  obscure  work 
as  reporter  very  soon  brought  me  into  close  contact 
with  some  of  the  dreadful  sores  which  disfigured  the 
body  social  and  politic  at  that  time.  But  do  you 
think  they  taught  me  anything?  No  more  than  they 
taught  the  blindest  racer  after  money  in  all  London. 
They  moved  me,  moved  me  deeply ;  they  stirred  the 
very  foundations  of  my  being;  for  I  was  far  from 
being  insensitive.  But  not  even  in  the  most  glaringly 
obvious  detail  did  they  move  me  in  the  right  direction. 
They  merely  filled  me  with  resentment,  and  a  passion- 
ate desire  to  bring  improvement,  aid,  betterment ;  a 
desire  to  force  the  authorities  into  some  action.  Never 
once  did  it  occur  to  me  that  the  movement  must  come 
from  the  people  themselves. 

Poverty,  though  frequently  a  dreadful  complica- 
tion, was  far  from  being  at  the  root  of  all  the  sores. 
The  average  respectable  working-class  wage-earner 
with  a  wife  and  family,  who  earned  from  25s.  to  35s. 
or  40s.  a  week,  would  spend  a  quarter  of  that  wage 
upon  his  own  drinking;  thereby  not  alone  making 
saving  for  a  rainy  day  impossible,  but  docking  his 
family  of  some  of  the  real  necessities  of  life.  But 
this  was  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course.  The  man 
wanted  the  beer ;  he  must  have  it.  The  State  made 
absolutely  no  demand  whatever  upon  such  a  man. 
But  it  did  for  him  and  his,  more  than  he  did  for  him- 

45 


THE    MESSAGE 

self  and  his  family.  And,  giving  positively  nothing 
to  the  State,  he  complainingly  demanded  yet  more 
from  it. 

These  were  respectable  men.  A  large  number  of 
men  spent  a  half,  and  even  three-quarters  of  their 
earnings  in  drink.  The  middle  class  spent  propor- 
tionately far  less  on  liquor,  and  far  more  upon  dis- 
play of  one  kind  and  another ;  they  seldom  denied 
themselves  anything  which  they  could  possibly  obtain. 
The  rich,  as  a  class,  lived  in  and  for  indulgence,  in 
some  cases  refined  and  subtle,  in  others  gross ;  but 
always  indulgence.  The  sense  of  duty  to  the  State 
simply  did  not  exist  as  an  attribute  of  any  class,  but 
only  here  and  there  in  individuals. 

I  believe  I  am  strictly  correct  in  saying  that  in  half 
a  century,  while  the  population  increased  by  seventy- 
five  per  cent.,  lunacy  had  increased  by  two  hundred 
and  fifty  per  cent. 

Yet  the  majority  rushed  blindly  on,  paying  no  heed 
to  any  other  thing  on  earth  than  their  own  gratifica- 
tion, their  own  pursuit  of  the  money  for  the  purchase 
of  pleasure.  One  of  the  tragic  fallacies  of  the  period 
was  this  crazy  notion  that  not  alone  pleasure,  but 
happiness,  could  be  bought  with  money,  and  in  no 
other  way.  And  the  few  who  were  stung  by  the  pre- 
vailing suffering  and  wretchedness  into  recognition  of 
our  parlous  state,  we,  for  the  most  part,  cherished  my 
wild  delusion,  and  insisted  that  the  trouble  could  be 
remedied  if  the  State  would  contract  and  discharge 
new  obligations.  We  clamoured  for  more  rights, 
more  help,  more  liberty,  more  freedom  from  this  and 
that;  never  seeing  that  our  trouble  was  our  incom- 

46 


A    JOURNALIST'S    EQUIPMENT 

plete  comprehension  of  the  rights  and  privileges  we 
had,  with  their  corresponding  obligations. 

Though  I  knew  them  not,  and  as  a  Daily  Gazette 
reporter  was  little  likely  to  meet  them,  there  were  men 
who  strove  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  people  to  the  truth, 
and  strove  most  valiantly.  I  call  to  mind  a  great 
statesman  and  a  great  general,  both  old  men,  a  great 
pro-consul,  a  great  poet  and  writer,  a  great  editor, 
and  here  and  there  politicians  with  elements  of  great- 
ness in  them,  who  fought  hard  for  the  right.  But 
these  men  were  lonely  figures  as  yet,  and  I  am  bound 
to  say  of  the  people's  leaders  generally,  at  the  time  of 
my  journalistic  enterprise,  that  they  were  a  poor, 
truckling,  uninspired  lot  of  sheep,  with  a  few  clever 
wolves  among  them,  who  saw  the  people's  madness 
and  folly  and  preyed  upon  it  masterfully  by  every 
trick  within  the  scope  of  their  ingenuity. 

Even  those  who  were  honourable,  disinterested,  and, 
for  such  a  period,  unselfish,  were  for  the  most  part 
the  disciples  of  tradition  and  the  slaves  of  that  life- 
sapping  curse  of  British  politics:  the  party  spirit, 
which  led  otherwise  honourable  men  to  oppose  with 
all  their  strength  the  measures  of  their  party  oppo- 
nents, even  in  the  face  of  their  country's  dire  need. 

Then  there  was  the  anti-British  faction,  a  party 
which  spread  fast-growing  shoots  from  out  the  then 
Government's  very  heart  and  root.  The  Govern- 
ment's half-hearted  supporters  were  not  anti-British, 
but  they  were  not  readers  of  the  Daily  Gazette;  they 
were  not,  in  short,  whole-hearted  Government  sup- 
porters. They  were  Whigs,  as  the  saying  went.  My 
party,  the  readers  of  the  Gazette,  the  out-and-out 

47 


THE    MESSAGE 

Government  party,  to  whom  I  looked  for  real  prog- 
ress, real  social  reform;  they  were  unquestionably 
riddled  through  and  through  with  this  extraordinary 
sentiment  which  I  call  anti-British,  a  difficult  thing 
to  explain  nowadays. 

With  the  newly  and  too  easily  acquired  rights  and 
liberties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with  its  universal 
spread  of  education,  cheap  literature,  and  the  like, 
there  came,  of  course,  increased  knowledge,  a  wider 
outlook.  No  discipline  came  with  it,  and  one  of  its 
earliest  products  was  a  nervous  dread  of  being 
thought  behind  the  time,  of  being  called  ignorant, 
narrow-minded,  insular.  People  would  do  anything 
to  avoid  this.  They  went  to  the  length  of  interlard- 
ing their  speech  and  writings  with  foreign  words 
often  in  ignorance  of  the  meaning  of  those  words. 
Broad-minded,  catholic,  tolerant,  cosmopolitan  — 
those  were  the  descriptive  adjectives  which  all  desired 
to  earn  for  themselves.  It  became  a  perfect  mania, 
particularly  with  the  young  and  clever,  the  half -edu- 
cated, the  would-be  "  smart  "  folk. 

But  it  was  also  the  honest  ambition  of  many  very 
worthy  people,  who  truly  desired  broad-minded  under- 
standing and  the  avoidance  of  prejudice.  This 
sapped  the  bulldog  qualities  of  British  pluck  and 
persistence  terribly.  You  can  see  at  a  glance  how  it 
would  shut  out  a  budding  Nelson  or  a  Wellington. 
But  its  most  notable  effect  was  to  be  seen  among  poli- 
ticians, who  were  able  to  claim  Fox  for  a  precedent. 

To  believe  in  the  superiority  of  the  British  became 
vulgar,  a  proof  of  narrow-mindedness.  But,  by  that 
token,  to  enlarge  upon  the  inferiority  of  the  British 

48 


A    JOURNALIST'S    EQUIPMENT 

indicated  a  broad,  tolerant  spirit,  and  a  wide  outlook 
upon  mankind  and  affairs.  From  that  to  the  senti- 
ment I  have  called  anti-British  was  no  more  than  a 
step.  Many  thoroughly  good,  honourable,  benevo- 
lent people  took  that  step  unwittingly,  and  all  uncon- 
sciously became  permeated  with  the  vicious,  suicidal 
sentiment,  while  really  seeking  only  good.  Such 
people  were  saved  by  their  natural  goodness  and  sense 
from  becoming  actual  and  purposeful  enemies  of  their 
country.  But  as  "  Little  Englanders  "  —  so  they 
were  called  —  they  managed,  with  the  best  intentions, 
to  do  their  country  infinite  harm. 

But  there  were  others,  the  naturally  vicious  and  un- 
scrupulous, the  morbid,  the  craven,  the  ignorant,  the 
self-seeking;  these  were  the  dangerous  exponents  of 
the  sentiment.  With  them,  Little  Englandism  pro- 
gressed in  this  wise :  "  There  are  plenty  of  foreigners 
just  as  good  as  the  British;  their  rule  abroad  is  just 
as  good  as  ours."  Then :  "  There  are  plenty  of 
foreigners  far  better  than  the  British ;  their  rule 
abroad  is  better  than  ours."  Then :  "  Let  the  people 
of  our  Empire  fend  for  themselves  among  other  peo- 
ples ;  our  business  is  to  look  after  ourselves."  Then : 
"  We  oppose  the  people  of  the  Empire ;  we  oppose 
British  rule;  we  oppose  the  British."  From  that  to 
"  We  befriend  the  enemies  of  the  British  "  was  less 
than  a  step.  It  was  the  position  openly  occupied  by 
many,  in  and  out  of  Parliament. 

"  We  are  for  you,  for  the  people ;  and  devil  take 
Flag,  Empire,  and  Crown ! "  said  these  ranters ; 
drunken  upon  liberties  they  never  understood,  free- 

49 


THE    MESSAGE 

dam  they  never  earned,  privileges  they  were  not  qual- 
ified to  hold. 

There  were  persons  among  them  who  spat  upon  the 
Flag  that  protected  their  worthless  lives,  and  cut  it 
down ;  sworn  servants  of  the  State  who  openly  pro- 
claimed their  sympathy  with  the  State's  enemies ; 
carefully  protected,  highly  privileged  subjects  of  the 
Crown,  who  impishly  slashed  at  England's  robes,  to 
show  her  nakedness  to  England's  foes. 

And  these  were  supporters,  members,  proteges  of 
the  Government,  and  readers  of  the  Daily  Gazette, 
upheld  in  all  things  by  that  organ.  And  I,  the  son  of 
an  English  gentleman  and  clergyman,  graduate  of  an 
English  university,  I  looked  to  this  party,  the  Liberal 
Government  of  England,  as  the  leaders  of  reform,  of 
progress,  of  social  betterment.  And  so  did  the  coun- 
try; the  British  public.  Errors  of  taste  and  judg- 
ment we  regretted.  That  was  how  we  described  the 
most  ribald  outbursts  of  the  anti-British  sentiment. 

It  is  hard  to  find  excuse  or  palliation.  Instinct 
must  have  told  us  that  the  demands,  the  programme, 
of  such  diseased  creatures,  could  only  aggravate  the 
national  ills  instead  of  healing  them.  Yes,  it  would 
seem  so.  I  can  only  say  that  comparatively  few 
among  us  did  see  it.  Perhaps  disease  was  too  general 
among  us  for  the  recognition  of  symptoms. 

This  then  was  the  mental  attitude  with  which  I  ap- 
proached my  duties  as  a  reporter  on  the  staff  of  a 
London  daily  newspaper  of  old  standing  and  good 
progressive  traditions.  And  my  notion  was  that  in 
every  line  written  for  publication,  the  end  of  social 
reform  should  be  served,  directly  or  indirectly.  My 

50 


A    JOURNALIST'S    EQUIPMENT 

idea  of  attaining  social  reformation  was  that  the 
people  must  be  taught,  urged,  spurred  into  extract- 
ing further  gifts  from  the  State;  that  the  public 
must  be  shown  how  to  make  their  lives  easier  by  get- 
ting the  State  to  do  more  for  them.  That  was  as 
much  as  my  education  and  my  expansive  theorizing 
had  done  for  me.  Assuredly  I  was  a  product  of  my 
age. 

I  had  forgotten  one  thing,  however,  and  that  was 
the  thing  which  Mr.  Charles  N.  Pierce  began  now  to 
drill  into  me,  by  analogy,  and  with  a  good  deal  more 
precision  and  directness  than  I  had  ever  seen  used  at 
Rugby  or  Cambridge.  This  one  thing  was  that  the 
Daily  Gazette  was  not  a  philanthropic  organ,  but  a 
people's  paper;  and  that  the  people  did  not  want 
instructing  but  interesting. 

"  But,"  I  pleaded,  "  surely,  for  their  own  sakes,  in 
their  own  interests " 

"  Damn  their  own  sakes !  " 

"  Well,  but " 

"  There's  no  '  but '  about  it.  The  public  is  an 
aggregation  of  individuals.  This  paper  must  interest 
the  individual.  The  individual  doesn't  care  a  damn 
about  the  people.  He  cares  about  himself.  He  is 
very  busy  making  money,  and  when  he  opens  his 
paper  he  wants  to  be  amused  and  interested ;  and  he 
is  not  either  interested  or  amused  by  any  instruction 
as  to  how  the  people  may  be  served.  He  doesn't  want 
'em  served.  He  wants  himself  served  and  amused. 
That's  your  job." 

I  believe  I  had  faint  inclinations  just  then  to 
wonder  whether,  after  all,  there  might  not  be  some- 

51 


THE    MESSAGE 

thing  to  be  said  for  the  bloated  Tories:  the  oppo- 
nents of  progress,  as  I  always  considered  them.  My 
thoughts  ran  on  parties,  in  the  old-fashioned  style, 
you  see.  Also  I  was  thinking,  as  a  journalist,  of  the 
characteristics  which  distinguished  different  news- 
papers. 

I  cordially  hated  Mr.  Charles  N.  Pierce,  but  he 
really  had  more  discernment  than  I  had,  for  he  said : 

"  Don't  you  worry  about  teaching  the  people  to 
grab  more  from  the  State.  They'll  take  fast  enough ; 
they'll  take  quite  as  much  as  is  good  for  'em,  without 
your  assistance.  But,  for  giving,  the  angel  Gabriel 
and  two  advertisement  canvassers  wouldn't  make  'em 
give  a  cent  more  than  they're  obliged." 


VI 

A  JOURNALIST'S  SURROUNDINGS 

"  Religion  crowns  the  statesman  and  the  man, 
Sole  source  of  public  and  of  private  peace."  —  YOUNG. 

I  AM  bound  to  suppose  that  I  must  have  been  a 
tolerably  tiring  person  to  have  to  do  with  during 
my  first  year  in  London.  The  reason  of  this  was  that 
I  could  never  concentrate  my  thoughts  upon  intimate, 
personal  interests,  either  my  own  or  those  of  the  peo- 
ple I  met.  My  thoughts  were  never  of  persons,  but 
always  of  the  people ;  never  of  affairs,  but  always  of 
tendencies,  movements,  issues,  ultimate  ends.  Prob- 
ably my  crude  unrest  would  have  made  me  tiresome  to 
any  people.  It  must  have  been  peculiarly  irritating 
to  my  contemporaries  at  that  period,  who,  whatever 
they  may  have  lacked,  assuredly  possessed  in  a  re- 
markable degree  the  faculty  of  concentration  upon 
their  own  individual  affairs,  their  personal  part  in 
the  race  for  personal  gain. 

I  remember  that  I  talked,  even  to  the  poor,  over- 
worked servant  at  my  lodging,  rather  of  the  pros- 
pects of  her  class  and  order  than  of  anything  more 
intimate  or  within  her  narrow  scope.  Poor  Bessie! 
She  was  of  the  callously  named  tribe  of  lodging- 
house  "  slaveys  " ;  and  what  gave  me  some  interest 
in  her  personality,  apart  from  the  type  she  repre- 

53 


THE    MESSAGE 

sented,  was  the  fact  that  she  had  come  from  the  Vale 
of  Blackmore,  a  part  of  Dorset  which  I  knew  very 
well.  I  even  remembered,  for  its  exceptional  pictur- 
esqueness  and  beauty  of  situation,  the  cottage  in 
which  Bessie  had  passed  her  life  until  one  year  before 
my  arrival  at  the  fourth-rate  Bloomsbury  "  apart- 
ments "  house  in  which  she  now  toiled  for  a  living. 
There  was  little  enough  of  the  sap  of  her  native 
valley  left  in  Bessie's  cheeks  now.  She  had  acquired 
the  London  muddiness  of  complexion  quickly,  poor 
child,  in  the  semi-subterranean  life  she  led. 

I  was  moved  to  inquire  as  to  what  had  led  her  to 
come  to  London,  and  gathered  that  she  had  been 
anxious  to  "  see  a  bit  o'  life."  Certainly  she  saw  life, 
of  a  kind,  when  she  entered  her  horrible  underground 
kitchen  of  a  morning,  for,  as  a  chance  errand  once 
showed  me,  its  floor  was  a  moving  carpet  of  black- 
beetles  until  after  the  gas  was  lighted.  In  Blooms- 
bury,  Bessie's  daily  work  began  about  six  o'clock  — 
there  were  four  stories  in  the  house,  and  coals  and 
food  and  water  required  upon  every  floor  —  and 
ended  some  seventeen  hours  later.  Occasionally,  an 
exacting  lodger  would  make  it  eighteen  hours  —  the 
number  of  Bessie's  years  in  the  world  —  but  seventeen 
was  the  normal. 

The  trains  which  every  day  came  rushing  in  from 
the  country  to  the  various  railway  termini  of  London 
were  almost  past  counting.  The  "  rural  exodus,"  as 
it  was  called,  was  a  sadly  real  movement  then.  Every 
one  of  them  brought  at  least  one  Bessie,  and  one  of 
her  male  counterparts,  with  ruddy  cheeks,  a  tin  box, 
and  bright  eyes  straining  to  "  see  life."  Insatiable 

54 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

London  drew  them  all  into  its  maw,  and,  while  sap- 
ping the  roses  from  their  cheeks,  enslaved  many  of 
them  under  one  of  the  greatest  curses  of  that  day: 
the  fascination  of  the  streets. 

So  terrible  a  power  was  exercised  by  this  unwhole- 
some passion  that  men  and  women  became  paralyzed 
by  it,  and  incapable  of  plucking  up  courage  enough 
to  enable  them  to  leave  the  streets.  I  talked  with 
men  —  poor,  sodden  creatures,  whose  greasy  black 
coats  were  buttoned  to  their  stubbly  chins  to  hide  the 
absence  of  collar  and  waistcoat  —  who  supported  a 
wretched  existence  in  the  streets,  between  begging, 
stealing,  opening  cab-doors,  and  the  like,  in  constant 
dread  of  police  attention.  Among  these  I  found 
many  who  had  refused  again  and  again  offers  of 
help  to  lead  an  honest,  self-dependent  life,  for  the 
sole  reason  that  these  offers  involved  quitting  the 
streets. 

The  same  creeping  paralysis  of  the  streets  kept 
men  from  emigration  to  parts  of  the  Empire  in  which 
independent  prosperity  was  assured  for  the  willing 
worker.  They  would  not  leave  the  hiving  streets, 
with  their  chances,  their  flaunting  vice,  their  inces- 
sant bustle,  and  their  innumerable  drinking  bars. 

The  disease  did  not  stop  at  endowing  the  streets 
with  fascination  for  these  poor,  undisciplined,  un- 
manned creatures ;  it  implanted  in  them  a  lively  fear, 
hard  to  comprehend,  but  very  real  to  them,  of  all 
places  outside  the  streets,  with  their  familiar,  pent 
noises  and  enclosed  strife. 

I  met  one  old  gentleman,  the  head  of  an  important 
firm  of  printers,  who,  being  impressed  with  the  squalid 

55 


THE    MESSAGE 

wretchedness  of  the  surroundings  in  which  his  work- 
people lived,  decided  to  shift  his  works  into  the  coun- 
try. He  chose  the  outskirts  of  a  charmingly  situated 
garden  city,  then  in  course  of  formation.  He  gave 
his  people  a  holiday  and  entertained  them  at  a  picnic 
party  upon  the  site  of  his  proposed  new  works.  He 
set  before  them  plans  and  details  of  pleasant  cottages 
he  meant  to  build  for  them,  with  good  gardens,  and 
scores  of  conveniences  which  they  could  never  know 
in  the  dingy,  grimy  tenements  for  which  they  paid 
extortionate  rents  in  London. 

There  were  four  hundred  and  thirty-eight  of  these 
work-people.  Twenty-seven  of  them,  with  some  hesi- 
tation, expressed  their  willingness  to  enter  into  the 
new  scheme  for  their  benefit.  The  remaining  four 
hundred  and  eleven  refused  positively  to  leave  their 
warrens  in  London  for  this  garden  city,  situated 
within  an  hour's  run  of  the  metropolis. 

Figure  to  yourself  the  attitude  of  such  people, 
where  the  great  open  uplands  of  the  Empire  were  con- 
cerned: the  prairie,  the  veld,  the  bush.  Consider 
their  relation  to  the  elements,  or  to  things  elemental. 
We  went  farther  than  "  Little  Englandism  "  in  those 
days ;  we  produced  little  street  and  alley  men  by  the 
hundred  thousand ;  and  then  we  bade  them  exercise 
their  rights,  their  imperial  heritage,  and  rule  an  Em- 
pire. As  for  me,  I  was  busy  in  my  newspaper  work 
trying  to  secure  more  rights  for  them;  for  men 
whose  present  freedom  from  all  discipline  and  control 
was  their  curse. 

The  reporters'  room  at  the  office  of  the  Daily  Ga- 
zette was  the  working  headquarters  of  five  other  men 

56 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

besides  myself.  One  was  a  Cambridge  man,  one  had 
been  at  Oxford,  one  came  from  Cork,  and  the  other 
two  were  products  of  Scotch  schools.  Two  of  the 
five  would  have  been  called  gentlemen ;  four  of  them 
were  good  fellows ;  the  fifth  had  his  good  points,  but 
perhaps  he  had  been  soured  by  a  hard  upbringing. 
One  felt  that  the  desire  for  money  —  advancement, 
success,  or  whatever  you  chose  to  call  it ;  it  all  meant 
the  one  thing  to  Dunbar  —  mastered  every  feeling, 
every  instinct  even,  in  this  young  man,  and  made  him 
about  as  safe  and  agreeable  a  neighbour  as  a  wolf 
might  be  for  a  kennel  of  dogs. 

A  certain  part  of  our  time  was  devoted  to  waiting 
in  the  reporters'  room  for  what  Mr.  Pierce  called  our 
"  assignments,"  to  this  or  that  reporting  task.  Also, 
we  did  our  writing  here,  and  a  prodigious  amount  of 
talking.  The  talk  was  largely  of  Fleet  Street,  the 
ruffianism  of  Mr.  Pierce,  the  fortunes  of  our  own  and 
other  journals,  the  poorness  of  our  pay,  the  arduous- 
ness  of  our  labours,  the  affairs  of  other  newspaper 
offices,  and  the  like.  But  at  other  times  we  turned  to 
politics,  and  over  our  pipes  and  copy  paper  would 
readjust  the  concert  of  Europe  and  the  balance  of 
world  power.  More  often  we  dealt  with  local  politics, 
party  intrigue,  and  scandals  of  Parliament;  and 
sometimes  —  more  frequently  since  my  advent,  it  may 
be  —  we  entered  gaily  upon  large  abstractions,  and 
ventilated  our  little  philosophies  and  views  of  the 
eternal  verities. 

By  my  recollection  of  those  queer  confused  days, 
my  colleagues  were  cynically  anarchical  in  their  polit- 
ical views,  unconvinced  and  unconvincing  Socialists, 

57 


THE    MESSAGE 

and  indifferent  Agnostics.  I  am  not  quite  sure  that 
we  believed  iti  anything  very  thoroughly  —  except 
that  things  were  in  a  pretty  bad  way.  Earnest  belief 
in  anything  was  not  a  feature  of  the  period.  I  recall 
one  occasion  when  consideration  of  some  tyrannical 
act  of  our  immediate  chief,  the  news-editor,  led  our 
talk  by  way  of  character  and  morality  to  questions 
of  religion.  The  Daily  Gazette,  I  should  mention, 
was  a  favourite  organ  with  the  most  powerful  relig- 
ious community  —  the  Nonconformists.  Campbell, 
one  of  the  two  Scotch  reporters,  hazarded  the  first 
remark  about  religion,  if  I  remember  aright:  some- 
thing it  was  to  the  effect  that  men  like  Pierce  had 
neither  religion  nor  manners.  Brown,  the  Cambridge 
man,  took  this  up. 

"  Well  now,"  he  said,  "  that's  a  queer  thing  about 
religion.  Fd  like  you  to  tell  me  what  anybody's 
religion  is  in  London.'* 

**  It's  the  capital  of  a  Christian  country,  isn't  it  ?  " 
said  Dunbar. 

"  Yes,"  admitted  Brown.  "  That's  just  it.  We're 
officially  and  politically  Christian.  It's  a  national 
affair.  We're  a  Christian  people;  but  who  knows 
a  Christian  individual?  Ours  is  a  Christian  news- 
paper, Christian  city,  Christian  country,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  There's  no  doubt  about  it.  All  England 
believes ;  but  no  single  man  I  ever  meet  admits  that 
he  believes.  I  suppose  it's  different  up  your  way, 
Campbell.  One  gathers  the  Scotch  are  religious  ?  " 

"  H'm !  I  won't  answer  for  that,"  growled  Camp- 
bell. "  As  a  people,  yes,  as  you  say ;  but  as  indi- 

58 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

viduals  —  well,  I  don't  kno\r.  But  my  father**  a 
believer ;  I  could  swear  to  iL" 

"Ah,  je»;  so's  mine.  But  Pm  not  talking  of 
fathers.  I  mean  our  generation.*' 

"  Well,"  I  began,  "  for  my  part,  Pm  not  BO  sure 
of  the  fathers." 

"  Oh,  we  can  count  TOU  oat,"  said  Kelly,  the  Irish- 
man. "  AH  parsons'  sons  are  atheists,  as  a  matter  of 
course ;  and  had  hats  at  that." 

"  Rather  a  severe  blow  at  oar  Christianity,  isn't 
it  ?  "  said  Brown. 

I  had  no  more  to  say  on  this  point,  not  wishing  to 
discuss  my  father.  But  I  knew  perfectly  weD  that 
that  good,  kind  man  had  cherished  no  belief  whatever 
in  many  of  what  were  judged  to  be  the  vital  dogmas 
of  Christianity. 

^  Well,  I've  just  been  thinking,"  said  CampbeH, 
"  and  upon  my  soul,  Brown  —  if  I've  got  one  —  I 
believe  you're  right.  I  don't  know  any  one  of  our 
generation  who  believes.  Every  one  thinks  every  one 
else  believes,  and  everybody  is  most  careful  not  to  be 
disrespectful  about  the  belief  everybody  else  is  sup- 
posed to  hold.  But,  begad,  nobody  believes  himself. 
We  all  wink  at  each  other  about  it;  accepting  the 
certainty  of  every  one  else's  belief,  and  only  recog- 
nizing as  a  matter  of  course  that  yon  and  me  —  we*we 
got  beyond  that  sort  of  thing." 

"  Well,  I've  often  thought  of  it,"  said  Brown. 
"  I'll  write  an  article  about  it  one  of  these  days." 

"  Who'll  you  get  to  publish  it?  " 

"ITm!     Yes,  that's  a  fact.     And  yet,  hang  it, 


THE    MESSAGE 

you  know,  how  absurd!     Who  is  there  in  this  office 
that  believes  ?  " 

"  Echo  answers,  '  who?  '  " 

"  I  happen  to  know  that  both  Rainham  and  Badde- 
ley go  to  church,"  said  Dunbar,  naming  a  proprietor 
and  a  manager. 

"  I  don't  see  the  connection,"  said  Brown. 

"  Because  there  isn't  any,"  said  Campbell.  "  But 
Dunbar  sees  it,  and  so  does  the  British  public,  begad. 
That's  the  kernel  of  the  whole  thing.  That's  why 
every  one  thinks  every  one  else,  except  himself, 
believes.  Rainham  and  Baddeley  think  their  wives, 
and  sons,  and  servants,  and  circle  generally  believe, 
and  therefore  would  be  shocked  if  Rainham  and 
Baddeley  didn't  go  to  church.  And  every  one  else 
thinks  the  same.  So  they  all  go." 

"  But,  my  dear  chap,  they  don't  all  go.  The  par- 
sons are  always  complaining  about  it.  The  women 
do,  but  the  men  don't  —  not  as  a  rule,  I  mean ;  par- 
ticularly when  they've  got  motors,  and  golf,  and 
things.  You  know  they  don't.  Here's  six  of  us  here. 
Does  any  one  of  us  ever  go  to  church  ?  " 

Dunbar,  looking  straight  down  over  his  nose,  said : 
"I  do  — often." 

"  You're  a  fine  fellow,  Dunbar,  sure  enough,"  said 
Campbell ;  "  and  I  believe  you'll  be  a  newspaper  pro- 
prietor in  five  years.  You've  got  your  finger  on  the 
pulse.  Can  you  look  me  in  the  face  and  say  you 
believe?  " 

Dunbar  smiled  in  his  knowing  way  and  wobbled. 
"  I  certainly  believe  it's  a  good  thing  to  go  to  church 
occasionally,"  he  said. 

60 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

"  And  I  believe  you'll  make  a  fortune  in  Fleet 
Street,  my  son." 

"  Well,  in  my  humble  opinion,"  said  Kelly,  "  the 
trouble  with  you  people  in  England  is  not  so  much 
that  you  don't  believe;  a  good  many  believe,  in  a 
kind  of  a  way,  like  they  believe  in  ventilation,  with- 
out troubling  to  act  on  it.  They  believe,  but  they 
don't  think  about  it;  they  don't  care,  it  isn't  real. 
The  poor  beggars  'Id  go  crazy  with  fear  of  hell-fire, 
if  the  sort  of  armchair  belief  they  have  was  real  to 
'em.  It  isn't  real  to  'em,  like  business,  and  money, 
and  that,  or  like  patriotism  is  in  Japan." 

"  Well,  it  really  is  a  rum  thing,"  said  Brown,  with 
an  affectation  of  pathos,  "  that  in  all  this  Christian 
country  I  shouldn't  know  a  single  believer  of  my 
generation." 

"  It's  a  devilish  bad  thing  for  the  country,"  said 
Campbell.  And  even  then,  with  all  my  fundamentally 
rotten  sociological  nostrums,  I  had  a  vague  feeling 
that  the  Scotchman  was  right  there. 

"  Well,  then,  that's  why  it's  good  to  go  to  church," 
said  Dunbar,  with  an  air  of  finality. 

"  I  still  don't  see  the  connection,"  murmured 
Brown. 

"  Because  it  still  isn't  there.  But,  of  course,  it's 
perfectly  obvious.  That's  why  Dunbar  sees  it,  and 
why  he'll  presently  run  a  paper."  Then  Campbell 
turned  to  Dunbar,  and  added  slowly,  as  though 
speaking  to  a  little  child :  "  You  see,  my  dear,  it's 
not  their  not  going  to  church  that's  bad ;  it's  their 
not  believing." 

If  I  remember  rightly,  Mr.  Pierce  ended  the  con- 
61 


THE    MESSAGE 

versation,  through  his  telephone,  by  assigning  to 
Brown  the  task  of  reporting  a  clerical  gathering  at 
Exeter  Hall.  Brown  was  credited  with  having  a  par- 
ticularly happy  touch  in  the  reporting  of  religious 
meetings.  He  certainly  had  an  open  mind,  for  I 
remember  his  saying  that  day  that  he  thought  Chris- 
tianity was  perhaps  better  adapted  to  a  skittish  cli- 
mate like  ours  than  Buddhism,  and  that  Ju-Ju 
worship  in  London  would  be  sure  to  cause  friction 
with  the  County  Council. 

As  I  see  it  now,  there  was  a  terribly  large  amount 
of  truth  in  the  view  taken  by  Brown  and  Campbell 
and  Kelly  about  belief  in  England,  and  more  par- 
ticularly in  London.  But  there  were  devout  men  of 
all  ages  who  did  not  happen  to  come  within  their 
circle  of  acquaintance.  I  met  Salvation  Army  officers 
occasionally,  who  were  both  intelligent,  self-denying, 
and  hard-working;  and  I  suppose  that  with  them 
belief  must  have  been  at  least  as  powerful  a  motive 
as  devotion  to  their  Army,  their  General,  and  the 
work  of  reclamation  among  the  very  poor.  Also, 
there  were  High  Church  clergymen,  who  toiled  un- 
ceasingly among  the  poor.  Symbolism  was  a  great 
force  with  them ;  but  there  must  have  been  real  belief 
there.  Also,  there  were  some  fine  Nonconformist  mis- 
sions. I  recall  one  in  West  London,  the  work  of 
which  was  a  great  power  for  good  in  such  infected 
warrens  as  Soho.  But  it  certainly  was  not  an  age  of 
faith  or  of  earnest  beliefs.  The  vast  majority  took 
their  Christianity,  with  the  national  safety  and  integ- 
rity, for  granted  —  a  thing  long  since  established 

62 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

by  an  earlier  generation;  a  matter  about  which  no 
modern  could  spare  time  for  thought  or  effort. 

I  believe  it  was  on  the  day  following  this  partic- 
ular conversation  in  the  reporters'  room  that  I  met 
Leslie  Wheeler  by  appointment  at  Waterloo,  and 
went  down  to  Weybridge  with  him  for  the  week-end. 
My  friend  was  in  even  gayer  spirits  than  usual,  and 
laughingly  told  me  that  I  must  "  Work  up  a  better 
Saturday  face  than  that "  before  we  got  to  Wey- 
bridge. 

I  had  known  Leslie  Wheeler  since  our  school-days ; 
and  I  remember  lying  awake  in  the  room  next  his  own 
at  Weybridge  that  night,  and  wondering  why  in  the 
world  it  was  I  felt  so  out  of  touch  with  my  high- 
spirited  friend.  During  that  Saturday  afternoon  and 
evening  I  had  been  pretty  much  preoccupied  in  secur- 
ing as  much  as  possible  of  Sylvia's  attention.  But 
the  journey  down  had  been  made  with  Leslie  alone, 
and  when  his  father  had  gone  to  bed,  we  two  had 
spent  another  half-hour  together  in  the  billiard- 
room,  smoking  and  sipping  whiskey  and  soda.  Leslie 
was  in  the  vein  most  usual  with  him,  of  "  turning  to 
mirth  all  things  on  earth  " ;  and  I  was  conscious, 
upon  my  side,  of  a  notable  absence  of  reciprocal 
feeling,  of  friendly  rapport.  And  I  could  find  no 
explanation  for  this,  as  I  lay  thinking  of  it  in  bed. 

Looking  backward,  I  see  many  causes  which  prob- 
ably contributed  to  my  feeling  of  lost  touch.  I  had 
only  been  about  a  month  in  London,  but  it  had  been 
a  busy  month,  and  full  of  new  experiences,  of  inti- 
mate touch  with  realities  of  London  life,  sordid  and 
otherwise.  It  was  all  very  unlike  Rugby  and  Cam- 

63 


THE    MESSAGE 

bridge;  very  unlike  the  life  of  the  big  luxurious 
Weybridge  house,  and  even  more  unlike  lichen-cov- 
ered Tarn  Regis.  In  those  days  I  took  little  stock 
of  such  mundane  details  as  bed  and  board.  But  these 
things  count;  I  had  been  made  to  take  note  of  them 
of  late. 

I  paid  12s.  6d.  a  week  for  my  garret,  and  7s.  a 
week  for  my  breakfast,  Is.  for  lighting,  and  Is.  for 
my  bath.  That  left  me  with  28s.  6d.  a  week  for  daily 
lunch  and  dinner,  clothes,  boots,  tobacco,  and  the 
eternal  penny  outgoings  of  London  life.  The  pur- 
chase of  such  a  trifle  as  a  box  of  sweets  for  Sylvia 
made  a  week's  margin  look  very  small.  Already  I 
had  begun  to  note  the  expensiveness  of  stamps,  laun- 
dry work,  omnibus  fares,  and  such  matters.  My 
training  had  not  been  a  hopeful  one,  so  far  as  small 
economies  went.  Leslie  twitted  me  with  neglecting 
golf,  and  failing  to  attend  the  Inter-'Varsity  cricket 
match.  He  found  economy,  like  all  other  things 
under  heaven,  and  in  heaven  for  that  matter,  suit- 
able subjects  for  the  exercise  of  his  tireless  humour. 
But  I  wondered  greatly  that  his  incessant  banter 
should  jar  upon  me;  that  I  should  catch  myself  re- 
garding him  with  a  coldly  appraising  eye.  Indeed, 
it  troubled  me  a  good  deal;  and  the  more  so  when 
I  thought  of  Sylvia. 

I  flatly  declined  to  admit  that  London  had  affected 
my  feeling  for  Sylvia.  Whatever  one's  view,  her  big 
violet  eyes  were  abrim  with  gentle  sympathy.  I 
watched  her  as  I  sat  by  her  side  in  church,  and 
thought  of  our  irreverent  talk  at  the  office.  Here 
was  sincere  piety,  at  all  events,  I  thought.  Mediae- 

64 


A    JOURNALIST'S    SURROUNDINGS 

valism  never  produced  a  sweeter  devotee,  a  worshipper 
more  rapt.  I  could  not  follow  her  into  the  place 
of  ecstasy  she  reached.  But,  I  told  myself,  I  could 
admire  from  without,  and  even  reverence.  Could  I? 
Well,  I  was  somewhat  strengthened  in  the  belief  that 
very  Sunday  night  by  Sylvia's  father. 


65 


VII 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

"If  faith  produce  no  works,  I  see 
That  faith  is  not  a  living  tree."  — HANNAH  MORE. 

DURING  that  Sunday  at  Weybridge  I  saw  but 
little  of  my  friend  Leslie.  It  was  only  by 
having  obtained  special  permission  from  the  Daily 
Gazette  office  that  I  was  able  to  remain  away  from 
town  that  day.  My  leisure  was  brief,  my  chances 
few,  I  felt;  and  that  seemed  to  justify  the  devoting 
of  every  possible  moment  to  Sylvia's  company. 

Sylvia's  church  was  not  the  family  place  of  wor- 
ship. When  Mrs.  Wheeler  and  Marjory  attended 
service,  it  was  at  St.  Mark's,  but  Sylvia  made  her 
devotions  at  St.  Jude's,  a  church  famous  in  that  dis- 
trict for  its  high  Anglicanism  and  stately  ritual. 

The  incumbent  of  St.  Jude's,  his  Reverence,  or 
Father  Hinton,  as  Sylvia  always  called  him,  was  a 
tall,  full-bodied  man,  with  flashing  dark  eyes,  and  a 
fine,  dramatic  presence.  I  believe  he  was  an  inde- 
fatigable worker  among  the  poor.  I  know  he  had 
a  keen  appreciation  of  the  dramatic  element  in  his 
priestly  calling,  and  in  the  ritual  of  his  church,  with 
its  rich  symbolism  and  elaborate  impressiveness. 
Even  from  my  brief  glimpses  of  the  situation,  I 
realized  that  this  priest  (the  words  clergyman  and 

66 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

vicar  were  discouraged  at  St.  Jude's)  played  a  very 
important,  a  vital  part,  in  the  scheme  of  Sylvia's  re- 
ligion.  I  think  Sylvia  would  have  said  that  the  per- 
sonality of  the  man  was  nothing ;  but  she  would  have 
added  that  his  office  was  much,  very  much  to  her. 

She  may  have  been  right,  though  not  entirely  so, 
I  think.  But  it  is  certain  that,  in  the  case  of  Father 
Hinton,  the  dramatic  personality  of  the  man  did 
nothing  to  lessen  the  magnitude  of  his  office  in  the 
minds  of  such  members  of  his  flock  as  Sylvia.  I 
gathered  that  belief  in  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  was, 
if  not  an  article  of  faith,  at  least  a  part  of  piety  at 
St.  Jude's. 

Before  seven  o'clock  on  Sunday  morning  I  heard 
footsteps  on  the  gravel  under  my  window,  and,  look- 
ing out,  saw  Sylvia,  book  in  hand,  leaving  the  house. 
She  was  exquisitely  dressed,  the  distinguishing  note 
of  her  attire  being,  as  always  in  my  eyes,  a  demure 
sort  of  richness  and  picturesqueness.  Never  was 
there  another  saint  so  charming  in  appearance,  I 
thought.  Her  very  Prayer  Book,  or  whatever  the 
volume  might  be,  had  a  seductive,  feminine  charm 
about  its  dimpled  cover. 

I  hurried  over  my  dressing  and  was  out  of  the 
house  by  half-past  seven  and  on  my  way  to  St. 
Jude's.  Breakfast  was  not  until  half-past  nine,  I 
knew.  The  morning  was  brilliantly  sunny;  and  life 
in  the  world,  despite  its  drawbacks  and  complexities, 
as  seen  from  Fleet  Street,  seemed  an  admirably  good 
thing  to  me  as  I  strode  over  a  carpet  of  pine-needles, 
and  watched  the  slanting  sun-rays  turning  the  tree 
trunks  to  burnished  copper. 

67 


THE    MESSAGE 

The  service  was  barely  over  when  I  tiptoed  into  a 
seat  beside  the  door  at  St.  Jude's.  At  this  period  the 
appurtenances  of  ritual  in  such  churches  as  St.  Jude's 
—  incense,  candles,  rich  vestments,  and  the  like  — 
rivalled  those  of  Rome  itself.  I  remember  that,  fresh 
from  the  dewy  morning  sunshine  without,  these  sym- 
bols rather  jarred  upon  my  senses  than  otherwise, 
with  a  strong  hint  of  artificiality  and  tawdriness,  the 
suggestion  of  a  theatre  seen  by  daylight.  But  they 
meant  a  great  deal  to  many  good  folks  in  Wey- 
bridge,  for,  despite  the  earliness  of  the  hour,  there 
were  fifty  or  sixty  women  present,  besides  Sylvia,  and 
half  a  dozen  men. 

I  could  see  Sylvia  distinctly  from  my  corner  by  the 
door,  and  I  was  made  rather  uneasy  by  the  fact  that 
she  remained  in  her  place  when  every  one  else  had  left 
the  building.  Five,  ten  minutes  I  waited,  and  then 
walked  softly  up  the  aisle  to  her  place.  I  did  not 
perceive,  until  I  reached  her  side,  that  she  was  kneel- 
ing, or  I  suppose  I  should  have  felt  obliged  to  refrain 
from  disturbing  her.  As  it  was,  Sylvia  heard  me, 
and,  having  seen  who  disturbed  her,  rose,  with  the 
gravest  little  smile,  and,  with  a  curtsy  to  the  altar, 
walked  out  before  me. 

I  found  that  Sylvia  generally  stayed  on  in  the 
church  for  the  eight  o'clock  service ;  and  I  was  duly 
grateful  when  she  yielded  to  my  solicitations  and  set 
out  for  a  walk  with  me  instead.  I  had  taken  a  few 
biscuits  from  the  dining-room  and  eaten  them  on  my 
way  out;  but  I  learned  later,  rather  to  my  distress, 
that  Sylvia  had  not  broken  her  fast.  I  must  suppose 
she  was  accustomed  to  such  practices,  for  she  seemed 

68 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

to  enjoy  almost  as  much  as  I  did  our  long  ramble  in 
the  fresh  morning  air. 

I  learned  a  good  deal  during  that  morning  walk, 
and  the  day  that  followed  it,  the  greater  part  of 
which  I  spent  by  Sylvia's  side.  Upon  the  whole,  I 
was  perturbed  and  made  uneasy ;  but  I  continued  to 
assure  myself,  perhaps  too  insistently  for  confidence 
or  comfort,  that  Sylvia  was  wholly  desirable  and 
sweet.  It  was  perhaps  unfortunate  for  my  peace  of 
mind  that  the  day  was  one  of  continuous  religious 
exercises.  The  fact  tinged  all  our  converse,  and  in- 
deed supplied  the  motive  of  most  of  it. 

I  did  not  at  the  time  realize  exactly  what  chilled 
and  disturbed  me,  but  I  think  now  that  it  was  what 
I  might  call  the  inhumanity  of  Sylvia's  religion.  I 
dipped  into  one  of  her  sumptuous  little  books  at  some 
time  during  the  day,  and  I  remember  this  passage: 

"  To  this  end  spiritual  writers  recommend  what  is 
called  a  *  holy  indifference '  to  all  created  things,  in- 
cluding things  inanimate,  place,  time,  and  the  like. 
Try  as  far  as  possible  to  be  indifferent  to  all  things. 
Remember  that  the  one  thing  important  above  all 
others  to  you  is  the  salvation  of  your  own  soul.  It 
is  the  great  work  of  your  life,  far  greater  than  your 
work  as  parent,  child,  husband,  wife,  or  friend." 

It  was  a  reputable  sort  of  a  book  this,  and  fathered 
by  a  respected  Oxford  cleric. 

There  was  singularly  little  of  the  mystic  in  my 
temperament.  My  mind,  as  you  have  seen,  was  sur- 
charged with  crude  but  fervent  desires  for  the  mate- 
rial betterment  of  my  kind.  I  was  nothing  if  not 
interested  in  human  well-being,  material  progress, 

69 


THE    MESSAGE 

mortal  ills  and  remedies.  Approaching  Sylvia's  posi- 
tion and  outlook  from  this  level  then,  I  thrust  my  way 
through  what  I  impatiently  dismissed  as  the  "  flum- 
mery " ;  by  which  I  meant  the  poetry,  the  pictur- 
esqueness,  the  sacrosanct  glamour  surrounding  his 
Reverence  and  St.  Jude's ;  and  found,  or  thought  I 
found,  that  Sylvia's  religion  was  at  worst  a  selfish 
gratification  of  the  senses  of  the  individual  worship- 
per, and  at  best  a  devout  and  pious  ministration  to 
the  worshipper's  own  soul;  in  which  the  loving  of 
one's  neighbour  and  caring  for  one  another  seemed 
to  play  precisely  no  part  at  all. 

True  it  was,  as  I  already  knew,  that  in  the  East 
End  of  London,  and  elsewhere,  some  of  the  very  High 
Church  clergy  were  carrying  on  a  work  of  real  devo- 
tion among  the  poor,  and  that  with  possibly  a  more 
distinguished  measure  of  success  than  attended  the 
efforts  of  any  other  branch  of  Christian  service. 
They  did  not  influence  anything  like  the  number  of 
people  who  were  influenced  by  dissenting  bodies,  but 
those  who  did  come  under  their  sway  came  without 
reservation. 

But  the  point  which  absorbed  me  was  the  question 
of  how  this  particular  aspect  of  religion  affected 
Sylvia.  In  this,  at  all  events,  it  seemed  to  me  a  far 
from  helpful  or  wholesome  kind  of  religion.  Sylvia 
liked  early  morning  services  because  so  few  people 
attended  them.  It  was  "  almost  like  having  the 
church  to  oneself."  The  supreme  feature  of  relig- 
ious life  for  Sylvia  had  for  its  emblem  the  tinkle 
of  the  bell  at  the  service  she  always  called  Mass. 
The  coming  of  the  Presence  —  that  was  the  C  Major 

70 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

of  life  for  Sylvia.  For  the  rest,  meditation,  pref- 
erably in  the  setting  provided  by  St.  Jude's,  with 
its  permanent  aroma  of  incense  and  its  dim  lights  — 
the  world  shut  out  by  stained  glass  —  this,  with 
prayer,  genuflections,  and  the  ecstasy  of  long 
thought  upon  the  circumstances  of  the  supreme  act 
of  Christ's  life  upon  earth,  seemed  to  me  to  represent 
the  sum  total  of  Sylvia's  religion. 

But,  over  and  above  what  was  to  me  the  chilling 
negativeness  of  all  this,  its  indifference  to  the  human 
welfare  of  all  other  mortals,  there  was  in  Sylvia's 
religion  something  else,  which  I  find  myself  unable, 
even  now,  to  put  into  words.  Some  indication  of  it, 
perhaps,  is  given  by  the  little  passage  I  have  quoted 
from  one  of  her  books.  It  was  the  one  thing  positive 
which  I  found  in  my  lady's  religion ;  all  the  rest  was 
to  me  a  beautiful,  intricate,  purely  artificial  negation 
of  human  life  and  human  interest. 

This  one  thing  positive  struck  into  my  vitals  with 
a  chill  premonition,  as  of  something  unnatural  and, 
to  me,  unfathomable.  It  was  a  sentiment  which  I  can 
only  call  anti-human.  Even  as  those  of  Sylvia's  per- 
suasion held  that  the  clergy  should  be  celibate,  so  it 
seemed  to  me  they  viewed  all  purely  human  loves,  ties, 
emotions,  sentiments,  and  interests  generally  with  a 
kind  of  jealous  suspicion,  as  influences  to  be  belittled 
as  far  as  possible,  if  not  actually  suppressed. 

Puritanism,  you  say?  But,  no;  the  thing  had  no 
concern  with  Puritanism,  for  it  lacked  the  discipline, 
the  self-restraint  that  made  Cromwell's  men  invin- 
cible. There  was  no  Puritanism  in  the  influence 
which  could  make  women  indifferent  to  the  earthly 

71 


THE    MESSAGE 

ties  of  love  and  sentiment,  to  children,  to  the  home 
and  domesticity,  while  at  the  same  time  implanting 
in  them  an  almost  feverish  appreciation  of  incense, 
rich  vestments,  gorgeous  decorations,  and  the  whole 
paraphernalia  of  such  a  service  as  that  of  St.  Jude's, 
Weybridge.  This  religion,  or,  as  I  think  it  would 
be  more  just  to  say,  Sylvia's  conception  of  this  re- 
ligion, did  not  say: 

"  Deny  yourself  this  or  that." 

It  said: 

"  Deny  yourself  to  the  rest  of  your  kind.  Deny 
all  other  mortals.  Wrap  yourself  in  yourself,  think- 
ing only  of  your  own  soul  and  its  relation  to  its 
Maker  and  Saviour." 

This  was  how  I  saw  Sylvia's  religion,  and,  though 
she  was  sweetly  kind  and  sympathetic  to  me,  Dick 
Mordan,  I  was  strangely  chilled  and  perturbed  by 
realization  of  the  fact  that  nothing  human  really 
weighed  with  her,  unless  her  own  soul  was  human ; 
that  the  people,  our  fellow  men  and  women,  of  whose 
situation  and  welfare  I  thought  so  much,  were  far 
less  to  Sylvia  than  the  Early  Fathers  and  the  Saints ; 
that  humanity  had  even  less  import  for  her,  was  less 
real,  than  to  me,  was  the  fascination  of  St.  Jude's 
incense-laden  atmosphere. 

Sylvia's  dainty  person  had  an  infinite  charm  for 
me;  the  personality  which  animated  and  informed 
it  chilled  and  repelled  me  as  it  might  have  been  a 
thing  uncanny.  When  I  insisted  upon  the  dear  im- 
portance of  some  one  of  humanity's  claims,  the  far- 
away gaze  of  her  beautiful  eyes,  with  their  light  that 
never  was  on  sea  or  land,  her  faintly  superior  smile 

72 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

—  all  this  thrust  me  back,  as  might  a  blow,  and  with 
more  baffling  effect. 

And  then  the  accidental  touch  of  her  little  hand 
would  bring  me  back,  with  pulses  fluttering,  and  the 
warm  blood  in  my  veins  insisting  that  sweet  Sylvia 
was  adorable;  that  everything  would  be  well  lost  in 
payment  for  the  touch  of  her  lips.  So,  moth-like,  I 
spent  that  pleasant  Sabbath  day,  attached  to  Sylvia 
by  ties  over  which  my  mind  had  small  control ;  by 
bonds  which,  if  the  truth  were  known,  were  not 
wholly  dissimilar,  I  believe,  from  the  ties  which  drew 
her  daily  to  the  heavy  atmosphere  of  the  sanctuary 
rails  of  St.  Jude's. 

In  the  evening  Mr.  Wheeler  asked  me  to  come  and 
smoke  a  cigar  with  him  in  his  private  room,  and  the 
invitation  was  not  one  to  be  evaded.  I  was  subcon- 
sciously aware  that  it  elicited  a  meaning  exchange  of 
glances  between  Marjory  and  her  mother. 

"  Well,  Mordan,  I  hope  things  go  well  with  you  in 
Fleet  Street,"  said  Mr.  Wheeler,  when  his  cigar  was 
alight  and  we  were  both  seated  in  his  luxurious  little 
den. 

"  Oh,  tolerably,"  I  said.  "  Of  course,  I  am  quite 
an  obscure  person  there  as  yet;  quite  on  the  lowest 
rungs,  you  know." 

"  Quite  so ;  quite  so ;  and  from  all  I  hear,  compe- 
tition is  as  keen  there  as  in  the  City,  though  the  re- 
wards are  —  rather  different,  of  course." 

I  nodded,  and  we  were  silent  for  a  few  moments. 
Then  he  flicked  a  little  cigar-ash  into  a  tray  and 
looked  up  sharply,  with  quite  the  Moorgate  Street 
expression,  I  remember  thinking. 

73 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  I  think  you  are  a  good  deal  attracted  by  my 
youngest  girl,  Mordan  ?  "  he  said ;  and  his  tone  de- 
manded a  reply  even  more  than  his  words. 

"  Yes,  I  certainly  admire  her  greatly,"  I  said, 
more  than  a  little  puzzled  by  the  wording  of  the 
question ;  more  than  a  little  fluttered,  it  may  be ;  for 
it  seemed  to  me  a  welcoming  sort  of  question,  and  I 
was  keenly  aware  of  my  ineligibility  as  a  suitor. 

"  Exactly.  That  is  no  more  than  I  expected  to 
hear  from  you.  Indeed,  I  think  anything  less  would 
—  well,  I  shouldn't  have  been  at  all  pleased  with 
anything  less." 

His  complaisance  quite  startled  me.  Somehow,  too, 
it  reminded  me  of  my  many  baffled  retirements  of  that 
day,  before  the  elements  in  Sylvia's  character  which 
chilled  and  repelled  me.  I  was  almost  glad  that  I  had 
not  committed  myself  to  any  warmer  or  more  definite 
declaration.  Mr.  Wheeler  weighed  his  cigar  with 
nice  care. 

"  Yes,"  he  continued.  "  If  you  had  disputed  the 
attraction  —  the  attachment,  I  should  perhaps  say  — 
I  should  have  found  serious  ground  for  criticizing 
your  —  your  behaviour  to  my  girl.  As  it  is,  of 
course,  the  thing  is  natural  enough.  You  have  been 
attracted ;  the  child  is  attractive ;  and  you  have  paid 
her  marked  attentions  —  which  is  what  any  young 
man  might  be  expected  to  do." 

"  If  he  is  going  to  suggest  an  engagement,"  I 
thought,  "  I  must  be  very  clear  about  my  financial 
position,  or  want  of  position."  Mr.  Wheeler  con- 
tinued thoughtfully  to  eye  his  cigar. 

"  Yes,  it  is  perfectly  natural,"  he  said ;  "  and  you 
74. 


will  probably  think,  therefore,  that  what  I  am  going 
to  say  is  very  unnatural  and  unkind.  But  you  must 
just  bear  in  mind  that  I  am  a  good  deal  older  than 
you,  and,  also,  I  am  Sylvia's  father." 

I  nodded,  with  a  new  interest. 

"  Well,  now,  Mordan,  let  me  say  first  that  I  know 
my  girls  pretty  well,  and  I  am  quite  satisfied  that 
Sylvia  is  not  fitted  to  be  a  poor  man's  wife.  You 
would  probably  think  her  far  better  fitted  for  that 
part  than  her  sister,  because  Marjory  is  a  lot  more 
gay  and  frivolous.  Well,  you  would  be  wrong. 
They  are  neither  of  them  really  qualified  for  the  post, 
but  Sylvia  is  far  less  so  than  Marjory.  In  point  of 
fact  she  would  be  wretched  in  it,  she  would  fail  in 
it ;  and  —  I  may  say  that  the  fact  would  not  make 
matters  easier  for  her  husband." 

There  did  not  seem  to  me  any  need  for  a  reply,  but 
I  nodded  again ;  and  Mr.  Wheeler  resumed,  after  a 
long  draw  at  his  cigar.  He  smoked  a  very  excellent, 
rather  rich  Havana. 

"  Yes,  girls  are  different  now  from  the  girls  I 
sweethearted  with;  and  girls  like  mine  must  have 
money.  I  dare  say  you  think  Sylvia  dresses  very 
prettily,  in  a  simple  way.  My  dear  fellow,  her  laun- 
dry bill  alone  would  bankrupt  a  newspaper  reporter." 

I  may  have  indicated  before,  that  Mr.  Wheeler 
was  not  a  person  of  any  particular  refinement.  He 
had  made  the  money  which  provided  a  tolerably 
costly  up-bringing  for  his  children,  but  his  own  edu- 
cation I  gathered  had  been  of  a  much  more  exiguous 
character.  There  was,  as  I  know,  a  good  deal  of 
truth  in  what  he  said  of  the  girl  of  the  period. 

75 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  Well,  now,  I  put  it  to  you,  Mordan,  whether,  ad- 
mitting that  what  I  say  about  Sylvia  is  true  —  and 
you  may  take  it  from  me  that  it  is  true  —  whether 
it  would  be  very  kind  or  fair  on  my  part  to  allow  you 
to  go  on  paying  attention  to  her  at  the  rate  of  — 
say  to-day's.  Do  you  think  it  would  be  wise  or  kind 
of  me  to  allow  it?  I  say  nothing  about  your  side  in 
the  matter,  because  —  well,  because  I  still  have  some 
recollection  of  how  a  young  fellow  feels  in  such  a 
case.  But  would  it  be  wise  of  me  to  allow  it  ?  " 

He  was  a  shrewd  man,  this  father  of  Sylvia,  and  of 
my  old  friend;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  tactics 
I  found  so  disarming  had  served  him  well  before  that 
day  in  the  City.  At  the  same  time,  instinct  seemed  to 
forbid  complete  surrender  on  my  side. 

"  It  is  just  consideration  of  the  present  difficulties 
of  my  position  which  has  made  me  careful  to  avoid 
seeking  to  commit  Sylvia  in  any  way,"  I  said. 

It  was  probably  an  unwise  remark.  At  all  events, 
it  struck  the  note  of  opposition,  of  contumacy,  which 
it  seemed  my  host  had  been  anticipating;  and  he 
met  it  with  a  new  inflection  in  his  voice,  as  who  should 
say :  "  Well,  now  to  be  done  with  explanations  and 
the  velvet  glove.  Have  at  you !  "  What  he  actually 
said  was : 

"  Ah,  there's  a  deal  of  mischief  to  be  done  without 
a  declaration,  my  friend.  But,  however,  I  don't  ex- 
pect that  you  should  share  my  view.  I  only  sug- 
gested it  on  the  off  chance  because  —  well,  I  suppose, 
because  that  would  be  the  easiest  way  out  for  me,  as 
host.  But  I  don't  know  that  I  should  have  thought 
much  of  you  if  you  had  met  me  half-way.  So  now 

76 


A    GIRL    AND    HER    FAITH 

let  me  do  my  part  and  get  it  over,  for  it's  not  very 
pleasant.  I  have  shown  you  my  reasons,  which,  how- 
ever they  may  seem  to  you,  are  undeniable  to  me. 
Now  for  my  wishes  in  the  matter,  as  a  father ;  I  am 
sure  there  is  no  need  for  me  to  say  '  instructions,'  so 
I  say  *  wishes.'  They  are  simply  that  for  the  time  — 
for  a  year  or  two,  anyhow  —  you  should  not  give  me 
the  pleasure  of  being  your  host,  and  that  you  should 
not  communicate  in  any  way  with  Sylvia.  There, 
now  it's  said,  and  done,  and  I  think  we  might  leave 
it  at  that ;  for  I  don't  think  it's  much  more  pleasant 
for  me  than  for  you.  I'm  sure  I  hope  we  shall  have 
many  a  pleasant  evening  together  —  er  —  after  a 
few  years  have  passed.  Now,  what  do  you  say  — 
shall  we  have  another  cigar,  or  go  in  to  the  ladies  ?  " 
I  flatter  myself  that,  with  all  my  short-comings,  I 
was  never  a  sulky  fellow.  At  all  events,  I  elected  to 
join  the  ladies;  but  my  reward  was  not  immediately 
apparent,  for  it  seemed  that  Sylvia  had  retired  for 
the  night.  At  least,  we  did  not  meet  again  until 
breakfast-time  next  morning,  when  departure  was 
imminent,  and  the  week's  work  had,  so  to  say,  begun. 


77 


VIII 

A    STIRRING    WEEK 

"  Ay  I  we  would  each  fain  drive 
At  random,  and  not  steer  by  rule. 
Weakness  !  and  worse,  weakness  bestows  in  vain. 
Winds  from  our  side  the  unsuiting  consort  rive. 
We  rush  by  coasts  where  we  had  lief  remain  ; 
Man  cannot,  though  he  would,  live  chance's  fool. 

Even  so  we  leave  behind, 

As,  charter' d  by  some  unknown  Powers, 

We  stem  across  the  sea  of  life  by  night. 

The  joys  which  were  not  for  our  use  design'd  ; 

The  friends  to  whom  we  had  no  natural  right, 

The  homes  that  were  not  destined  to  be  ours. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

IT  goes  without  saying  that  Mr.  Wheeler's  attitude, 
and  my  being  practically  forbidden  the  house  at 
Weybridge,  strengthened  and  sharpened  my  interest 
in  Sylvia.  Nothing  else  so  fans  the  flame  of  a  young 
man's  fancy  as  being  forbidden  all  access  to  its  ob- 
ject. Accordingly,  in  the  weeks  which  followed  that 
Sunday  at  Weybridge,  I  began  an  ardent  correspond- 
ence with  Sylvia,  after  inducing  her  to  arrange  to 
call  for  letters  at  a  certain  newspaper  shop  not  far 
from  the  station. 

It  was  a  curious   correspondence   in  many  ways. 
Some  of  my  long,  wordy  epistles  were  indited  from 

78 


A    STIRRING    WEEK 

the  reporters'  room  at  the  Daily  Gazette  office,  in  the 
midst  of  noisy  talk  and  the  hurried  production  of 
"  copy."  Others,  again,  were  produced,  long  after 
—  for  my  health's  sake  —  I  should  have  been  in  bed ; 
and  these  were  written  on  a  corner  of  my  little  chest 
of  drawers  in  the  Bloomsbury  lodging-house.  I  was 
a  great  reader  of  the  poet  Swinburne  at  the  time,  and 
I  doubt  not  my  muse  was  sufficiently  passionate  seem- 
ing. But,  though  I  believe  my  phrases  of  endearment 
were  alliteratively  emphatic,  and  even,  as  I  after- 
wards learned,  somewhat  alarming  to  their  recipient, 
yet  the  real  mainspring  of  my  eloquence  was  the 
difference  between  our  respective  views  of  life,  Syl- 
via's and  mine. 

In  short,  before  very  long  my  letters  resolved  them- 
selves into  fiery  and  vehement  denunciation  of  Sylvia's 
particular  and  chosen  metier  in  religion,  and  equally 
vehement  special  pleading  on  behalf  of  the  claims  of 
humanity  and  social  reform,  as  I  saw  them.  I  find 
the  thing  provocative  of  smiles  now,  but  I  was  terri- 
bly in  earnest  then,  or  thought  so,  and  had  realized 
nothing  of  the  absolute  futility  of  pitting  tempera- 
ment against  temperament,  reason  against  conviction, 
argument  against  emotional  belief. 

We  had  some  stolen  meetings,  too,  in  the  evenings, 
I  upon  one  side  of  a  low  garden  wall,  Sylvia  upon  the 
other.  Stolen  meetings  are  apt  to  be  very  sweet  and 
stirring  to  young  blood ;  but  the  sordid  consideration 
of  the  railway  fare  to  Weybridge  forbade  frequent 
indulgence,  and  such  was  my  absorption  in  social 
questions,  such  my  growing  hatred  of  Sylvia's  anti- 
human  form  of  religion,  that  even  here  I  could  not 

79 


THE    MESSAGE 

altogether  forbear  from  argument.  Indeed,  I  believe 
I  often  left  poor  Sylvia  weary  and  bewildered  by  the 
apparently  crushing  force  of  my  representations, 
which,  while  quite  capable  of  making  her  pretty  head 
to  ache,  left  her  mental  and  emotional  attitude  as 
completely  untouched  as  though  I  had  never  opened 
my  lips. 

Wrought  up  by  means  of  my  own  eloquence,  I 
would  make  my  way  back  to  London  in  a  hot  tremor 
of  exaltation,  which  I  took  to  be  love  and  desire  of 
Sylvia.  And  then,  as  like  as  not,  I  would  receive  a 
letter  from  my  lady-love  the  next  day,  the  refrain  of 
which  would  be: 

"  How  strange  you  are.  How  you  muddle  me ! 
Indeed,  you  don't  understand;  and  neither,  perhaps, 
do  I  understand  you.  It  seems  to  me  you  would  drag 
sacred  matters  down  to  the  dusty  level  of  your  poli- 
tics." 

The  dusty  level  of  my  politics !  That  was  it.  The 
affairs  of  the  world,  of  mortal  men,  they  were  as  the 
affairs  of  ants  to  pretty  Sylvia.  A  lofty  and  soaring 
view,  you  say  ?  Why,  no ;  not  that  exactly,  for  what 
remained  of  real  and  vital  moment  in  her  mind,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  serious  interest  in  humanity?  There 
remained,  as  a  source  of  much  gratification,  what  I 
called  the  daily  dramatic  performance  at  St.  Jude's ; 
and  there  remained  as  the  one  study  worthy  of  serious 
devotion  and  interest  —  Sylvia  Wheeler's  own  soul. 
She  never  sought  to  influence  the  welfare  of  another 
person's  soul.  Indeed,  as  she  so  often  said  to  me, 
with  a  kind  of  plaintiveness  which  should  have  soft- 
ened my  declamatory  ardour  but  did  not,  she  did  not 

80 


A    STIRRING    WEEK 

like  speaking  of  such  matters  at  all ;  she  regarded  it 
as  a  kind  of  desecration. 

No,  it  did  not  seem  to  me  a  lofty  and  inspiring 
view  that  Sylvia  took.  On  the  contrary,  it  exercised 
a  choking  effect  upon  me,  by  reason  of  what  I  re- 
garded as  its  intense  littleness  and  narrowness.  The 
too  often  bitter  and  sordid  realities  of  the  struggle 
of  life,  as  I  saw  it  in  London,  had  the  effect  upon 
me  of  making  Sylvia's  esoteric  exclusiveness  of  inter- 
est seem  so  petty  as  to  be  an  insult  to  human  intelli- 
gence. I  would  stare  out  of  the  train  windows,  on  my 
way  back  from  Weybridge,  at  the  countless  lights, 
the  endless  huddled  roofs  of  London ;  and,  seeing  in 
these  a  representation  of  the  huge  populace  of  the 
city,  I  would  stretch  out  my  arms  in  an  impotent 
embrace,  muttering: 

"  Yes,  indeed,  you  are  real ;  you  are  more  impor- 
tant than  any  other  consideration ;  you  are  not  the 
mere  shadows  she  thinks  you ;  your  service  is  of  more 
moment  than  any  miracle,  or  than  any  nursing  of 
one's  own  soul !  " 

And  so  I  would  make  my  way  to  Fleet  Street, 
where  I  forced  myself  to  believe  I  served  the  people 
by  teaching  them  to  despise  patriotism,  to  give  noth- 
ing, but  to  organize  and  demand,  and  keep  on  de- 
manding and  obtaining,  more  and  more,  from  a  State 
whose  business  it  was  to  give,  and  to  ask  nothing  in 
return.  I  was  becoming  known,  and  smiled  at  mock- 
ingly, for  my  earnest  devotion  to  the  extreme  of  the 
Daily  Gazette's  policy,  which,  if  it  made  for  any- 
thing, made,  I  suppose,  for  anti-nationalism,  anti- 
militarism,  anti-Imperialism,  anti-loyalty,  and  anti- 

81 


THE    MESSAGE 

everything  else  except  State  aid  —  by  which  was 
meant  the  antithesis  of  aid  of  the  State. 

"  I've  got  quite  a  good  j  ob  for  you  this  afternoon, 
Mordan  —  something  quite  in  your  line,"  said  Mr. 
Charles  N.  Pierce  one  morning.  "  A  lot  of  these 
South  African  firebrands  are  having  a  luncheon  at 
the  Westminster  Palace  Hotel,  and  that  fellow  John 
Crondall  is  to  give  an  address  afterwards  on  '  Impe- 
rial Interests  and  Imperial  Duties.'  I'll  give  you 
your  fling  on  this  up  to  half  a  column  —  three-quar- 
ters if  it's  good  enough ;  but,  be  careful.  A  sort  of 
contemptuous  good  humour  will  be  the  best  line  to 
take.  Make  'em  ridiculous.  And  don't  forget  to 
convey  the  idea  of  the  whole  business  being  pluto- 
cratic. You  know  the  sort  of  thing:  Park  Lane 
Israelites,  scooping  millions,  at  the  expense  of  the 
overtaxed  proletariat  in  England.  Jingoism,  a  sort 
of  swell  bucket-shop  business  —  you  know  the  tone. 
None  of  your  heroics,  mind  you.  It's  got  to  be  news ; 
but  you  can  work  in  the  ridicule  all  right." 

I  always  think  of  that  luncheon  as  one  of  the 
stepping-stones  in  my  life.  However  crude  and  mis- 
taken I  had  been  up  till  then,  I  had  always  been  sin- 
cere. My  report  of  that  function  went  against  my 
own  convictions.  The  writing  of  it  was  a  painful 
business ;  I  knew  I  was  being  mean  and  dishonest. 
Not  that  what  I  heard  there  changed  my  views  mate- 
rially. No;  I  still  clung  to  my  general  convictions, 
which  fitted  the  policy  of  the  Dally  Gazette.  But  the 
fact  remained  that  in  treating  that  gathering  as  I 
did,  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  my  news-editor,  I  knew 

82 


A    STIRRING   WEEK 

that  I  was  being  dishonest,  that  I  was  conveying  an 
untrue  impression. 

In  this  feeling,  as  in  most  of  a  young  man's  keen 
feelings,  the  personal  element  played  a  considerable 
part.  I  was  introduced  to  the  speaker,  John  Cron- 
dall,  by  a  Cambridge  man  I  knew,  who  came  there  on 
behalf  of  a  Conservative  paper,  which  had  recently 
taken  a  new  lease  of  life  in  new  hands,  and  become 
the  most  powerful  among  the  serious  organs  of  the 
Empire  party.  It  is  a  curious  thing,  by  the  way, 
that  overwhelming  as  was  the  dominance  of  the  anti- 
national  party  in  politics,  the  Imperialist  party  could 
still  claim  the  support  of  the  greatest  and  most 
thoughtfully  written  newspapers. 

John  Crondall  had  no  time  to  spare  for  more  than 
a  very  few  words  with  so  obscure  a  person  as  myself ; 
but  in  two  minutes  he  was  able  to  produce  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  me,  as  he  did  upon  most  people  who 
met  him.  John  Crondall  had  a  great  deal  of  per- 
sonal charm,  but  the  thing  about  him  which  bit  right 
into  my  consciousness  that  afternoon  was  his  earnest 
sincerity.  As  Crewe,  the  man  who  introduced  me  to 
him,  said  afterwards: 

"  There  isn't  one  particle  of  flummery  in  Cron- 
dall's  whole  body." 

It  was  an  obviously  truthful  criticism.  You  might 
agree  with  the  man  or  not,  but  no  intelligent  human 
being  could  doubt  his  honesty,  the  reality  of  his  con- 
victions, the  strength  and  sincerity  of  his  devotion  to 
the  cause  of  those  convictions.  It  was  perfectly  well 
known  then  that  Crondall  had  played  a  capable  third 
or  fourth  fiddle  in  the  maintenance,  so  far,  of  the 

83 


THE    MESSAGE 

Imperial  interest  in  South  Africa.  His  masterful 
leader,  the  man  who,  according  to  report,  had  in- 
spired all  his  fiery  earnestness  in  the  Imperialist 
cause,  was  dead.  But  John  Crondall  had  relinquished 
nothing  of  his  activity  as  a  lieutenant,  and  continued 
to  spend  a  good  share  of  his  time  in  South  Africa, 
while,  wherever  he  was,  continuing  to  devote  his  ener- 
gies to  the  same  cause. 

As  for  his  material  interests,  Crewe  assured  me  that 
Crondall  knew  no  more  of  business,  Soutn  African  or 
otherwise,  than  a  schoolboy.  He  had  inherited  prop- 
erty worth  about  a  couple  of  thousand  a  year,  and 
had  rather  decreased  than  added  to  it.  For,  though 
he  had  acted  as  war  correspondent  in  the  Russo- 
Japan  war,  and  through  one  or  two  "  little  wars," 
in  outlying  parts  of  the  British  Empire,  circum- 
stances had  prevented  such  work  being  of  profit  to 
him.  In  the  South  African  war  he  had  served  as  an 
irregular,  and  achieved  distinction  in  scouting  and 
guiding  work. 

John  Crondall's  life,  I  gathered,  had  been  the  very 
opposite  of  my  own  sheltered  progress  from  Dorset 
village  to  school,  from  school  to  University,  and 
thence  to  my  present  street-bound  routine  in  London. 
His  views  were  clearly  no  less  opposite  to  that  vague 
tumult  of  resentment,  protest,  and  aspiration  which 
represented  my  own  outlook  upon  life.  Indeed,  his 
speech  that  day  was  an  epitome  of  the  sentiment  and 
opinions  which  I  had  chosen  to  regard  with  the  utmost 
abhorrence. 

With  Crondall,  every  other  consideration  hinged 
upon  and  was  subservient  to  the  Imperialist  idea  of 

84 


A    STIRRING   WEEK 

devotion  to  the  bond  which  united  all  British  posses- 
sions under  one  rule.  The  maintenance  and  further- 
ance of  that  tie,  the  absorption  of  all  parts  into  that 
great  whole,  the  subordination  of  all  other  interests 
to  this :  that  I  took  to  be  John  Crondall's  great  end 
in  life.  By  association  I  had  come  to  identify  myself, 
and  my  ideals  of  social  reform,  entirely  with  those  to 
whom  mere  mention  of  the  rest  of  the  Empire,  or  of 
the  ties  which  made  it  an  Empire,  was  as  a  red  rag 
to  a  bull. 

I  have  tried  to  explain  something  of  the  causes  for 
this  extraordinary  attitude,  but  I  am  conscious  that 
at  the  present  time  it  cannot  really  be  explained.  It 
was  there,  however.  We  might  interest  ourselves  in 
talk  of  Germany,  we  might  enthusiastically  admire 
and  even  model  ourselves  upon  the  conduct  of  a  for- 
eign people;  but  mention  of  the  outside  places  of 
our  own  Empire  filled  us  with  anger,  resentment, 
scorn,  and  contempt.  It  amounted  to  this:  that  we 
regarded  as  an  enemy  the  man  who  sought  to  serve 
the  Empire.  He  cannot  do  that  without  opposing 
us,  we  said  in  effect;  as  one  who  should  say:  You 
cannot  cultivate  my  garden,  or  repair  my  fences, 
without  injuring  my  house  and  showing  yourself  an 
enemy  to  my  family.  A  strange  business ;  but  so  it 
was. 

Therefore,  John  Crondall's  speech  that  day  found 
me  full  enough  of  opposition,  and  not  at  all  inclined 
to  be  sympathetic.  But  the  thing  of  it  was,  I  knew 
him  for  an  honest  and  disinterested  man ;  a  man 
alight  with  high  inspiration  and  lofty  motive ;  a  man 
immeasurably  above  sordid  or  selfish  ends.  And  it 

85 


THE    MESSAGE 

was  my  task,  first,  to  ridicule  him;  and,  second,  to 
attach  sordidness  and  self-interest  to  him.  That  was 
the  thing  which  made  the  day  eventful  for  me. 

John  Crondall  talked  of  British  rule  and  British 
justice,  as  he  had  known  them  in  the  world's  far 
places.  He  drew  pictures  of  Oriental  rule,  Boer  rule, 
Russian  rule,  savage  rule;  and,  again,  of  the  meth- 
ods and  customs  of  foreign  Powers  in  their  colonial 
administration.  When  he  claimed  this  and  that  for 
British  rule,,  and  the  Imperial  unity  which  must  back 
it,  as  such,  sneers  came  naturally  to  me.  The  anti- 
British  sentiment  covered  that.  My  qualms  began, 
when  he  based  his  plea  upon  the  value  of  British 
administration  to  all  concerned,  the  danger  to  civili- 
zation, to  mankind,  of  its  being  allowed  to  weaken. 

Remember,  he  spoke  in  pictures,  and  in  the  first 
person ;  not  of  imaginings,  but  of  what  he  had  seen : 
how  a  single  anti-British  speech  in  London,  meant  a 
month's  prolongation  of  bloody  strife  in  one  country, 
or  an  added  weight  of  cruel  oppression  in  another. 
Right  or  wrong,  John  Crondall  carried  you  with  him ; 
for  he  dealt  with  men  and  things  as  he  had  brothered 
and  known  them,  before  ever  he  let  loose,  in  a  fiery 
peroration,  that  abstract  idea  of  Empire  patriotism 
which  ruled  his  life. 

But  it  was  not  all  this  that  made  my  paltry  jour- 
nalistic task  a  hard  one.  It  was  my  certainty  of 
Crondall's  lofty  sincerity.  From  that  afternoon  I 
date  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  my  Daily  Gazette 
engagement.  Some  men  in  my  shoes  would  have 
moved  to  success  from  this  point;  gaining  from  it 
either  complete  unscrupulousness,  or  the  bold  decision 

86 


A    STIRRING   WEEK 

which  would  have  made  them  important  as  friends  or 
enemies.  For  my  part  I  was  simply  slackened  by  the 
episode.  I  met  John  Crondall  several  times  again. 
He  chaffed  me  in  the  most  generous  fashion  over  my 
abominably  unfair  report  of  the  luncheon  gathering. 
He  influenced  me  greatly,  though  my  opinions  re- 
mained untouched,  so  far  as  I  knew. 

I  cannot  explain  just  how  John  Crondall  influenced 
me,  but  I  am  very  conscious  that  he  had  a  broaden- 
ing effect  on  me  —  he  enlarged  my  horizon.  If  he 
had  remained  in  London  things  might  have  gone  dif- 
ferently with  me.  One  cannot  tell.  Among  other 
things,  I  know  his  influence  mightily  reduced  the 
number  and  length  of  my  letters  to  Weybridge.  In 
my  mind  I  was  always  fighting  John  Crondall.  It 
was  my  crowded  millions  of  England  against  his 
lonely,  sun-browned  men  and  women  outside  —  his 
world  interests.  The  war  in  my  heart  was  real,  un- 
ceasing. And  then  there  was  pretty  Sylvia  and  her 
little  soul,  and  her  meditations,  and  her  daily  mira- 
cles. The  pin-point,  bright  as  it  was,  became  too 
tiny  for  me  to  concentrate  upon  it,  when  contrasted 
with  these  other  tumultuous  concerns. 

Then  came  a  crowded,  confused  week,  in  which  I 
saw  John  Crondall  depart  by  the  South  African  boat- 
train  from  Waterloo.  The  first  lieutenant  of  his  dead 
leader  out  there  had  cabled  for  Crondall  to  come  and 
hold  his  broad  shoulders  against  the  side  of  some 
political  dam.  My  eyes  pricked  when  John  Crondall 
wrung  my  hand. 

"  You're  all  right,  sonny,"  he  said.  "  Don't  you 
suppose  I  have  the  smallest  doubt  about  you." 

87 


THE    MESSAGE 

I  had  never  given  him  anything  but  sneers  and 
opposition  —  I,  a  little  unknown  scrub  of  a  reporter ; 
he  a  man  who  helped  to  direct  policies  and  shape 
States.  Here  he  was  rushing  off  to  the  other  side 
of  the  earth  at  his  own  expense,  sacrificing  his  own 
interests  and  engagements  at  home,  in  the  service  of 
an  Idea,  an  abstract  Tie,  a  Flag.  My  philosophy  had 
seemed  spacious  beside,  say,  Sylvia's :  to  secure  better 
things  for  those  about  me,  instead  of  for  my  own  soul 
only.  But  what  of  Crondall?  As  I  say,  my  eyes 
pricked,  even  while  I  framed  some  sentence  in  my 
mind  expressing  regret  for  his  wrong-headedness. 
Ah,  well ! 

The  same  week  —  the  same  day  —  brought  me  the 
gentlest  little  note  of  dismissal  from  Sylvia.  Her 
duty  to  her  father,  and  —  my  ideas  seemed  too  much 
for  her  peace  of  mind ;  so  bewildering.  "  I  am  no 
politician,  you  know ;  and  truth  to  tell,  these  matters 
which  seem  so  much  to  you  that  you  would  have  them 
drive  religion  from  me,  they  seem  to  me  so  infinitely 
unimportant.  Forgive  me !  " 

No  doubt  my  vanity  was  wounded,  but  I  will  not 
pretend  that  I  was  very  seriously  hurt.  Neither  could 
I  ponder  long  upon  the  matter,  because  another  letter, 
received  by  the  same  post,  claimed  my  attention. 
Sylvia's  letter  threw  out  a  hint  of  better  things  for 
us  in  a  year  or  two's  time.  Her  notion  of  a  break 
between  us  was  "  for  the  present."  There  were  refer- 
ences to  "  later  on,  when  you  can  come  here  again, 
and  we  need  not  hide  things."  But  my  other  letter 
made  more  instant  claims.  It  was  type-written,  and 
ran  thus : 

88 


A    STIRRING   WEEK 

"  DEAR    MR.    MORDAN  :  —  Mr.    Chas.    N.    Pierce 
directs  me  to  inform  you  that  after  the  expiration 
of  the  present  month  your  services  will  no  longer  be 
required  by  the  editor  of  the  Daily  Gazette. 
"  I  am,  Sir, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

'"  JAMES  MARTIN, 

"  Secretary." 

I  pictured  the  little  pale-eyed  rabbit  of  a  man 
typing  the  dictum  of  his  Napoleon,  his  hero,  and 
wondering  in  his  amiable  way  how  "  Mr.  Mordan  " 
would  be  affected  thereby,  and  how  he  had  managed 
to  displease  the  great  man.  As  for  "  the  editor  of 
the  Daily  Gazette,"  I  had  not  seen  him  since  the  day 
of  my  engagement.  But  I  recalled  now  various  re- 
cent signs  of  chill  disapproval  of  my  work  on  Mr. 
Pierce's  part.  And,  indeed,  I  was  aware  myself  of  a 
slackness  in  my  work,  a  kind  of  reckless,  windmill- 
tilting  tendency  in  my  general  attitude. 

Meantime,  there  was  the  fact  that  I  had  recently 
encroached  twice  upon  my  tiny  nest-egg ;  once  to  buy 
a  wedding  present  for  my  sister  Lucy,  and  once  for 
a  piece  of  silly  extravagance. 

It  was  quite  a  notable  week. 


A    STEP    DOWN 

"  Cosmopolitanism  is  nonsense ;  the  cosmopolite  is  a  cipher, 
worse  than  a  cipher  ;  outside  of  nationality  there  is  neither  art,  nor 
truth,  nor  life  ;  there  is  nothing."  —  IVAN  TURGENIEFF. 

I  HAVE  mentioned  a  piece  of  reckless  extrava- 
gance ;  it  was  reckless  in  view  of  my  straightened 
circumstances.  And  the  reason  I  mention  this  ap- 
parent trifle  is  that  it  and  its  attendant  circumstances 
influenced  me  in  my  conduct  after  the  abrupt  termi- 
nation of  the  Daily  Gazette  engagement. 

One  of  my  fellow  knights  of  the  reporters'  room 
introduced  me  in  a  certain  Fleet  Street  wine-bar  to 
one  of  the  characters  of  that  classic  highway  —  a 
man  named  Clement  Blaine,  who  edited  and  owned  a 
weekly  publication  called  The  Mass.  I  hasten  to  add 
that  this  journal  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  any 
kind  of  religious  observance.  Its  title  referred  to 
the  people,  or  rather,  to  the  section  of  the  public 
which,  at  that  time,  we  still  described  by  the  quaintly 
misleading  phrase,  "  the  working  classes,"  as  though 
work  were  a  monopoly  in  the  hands  of  the  manual 
labourer. 

The  Mass  was  a  journal  which  had  quite  a  vogue 
at  that  time.  This  was  brought  about,  I  suppose, 

90 


A    STEP    DOWN 

by  the  wave  of  anti-nationalism  which,  in  1906,  estab- 
lished the  notorious  administration  which  subsequently 
became  known  as  "  The  Destroyers."  It  was  main- 
tained largely,  I  fancy,  by  Clement  Elaine's  genius 
for  getting  himself  quoted  in  other  journals  of  every 
sort  and  standing. 

The  existence  of  The  Mass,  and  the  popularity 
which  it  earned  by  outraging  every  civic  and  national 
decency,  stands  in  my  mind  as  a  striking  example  of 
the  extraordinary  laxity  and  slackness  of  moral 
which  had  grown  out  of  our  boasted  tolerance,  broad- 
mindedness,  and  cosmopolitanism.  We  had  waxed 
drunken  upon  the  parrot-like  asseveration  of 
"  rights,"  which  our  fathers  had  won  for  us,  and  we 
had  no  time  to  spare  for  their  compensating  duties. 
This  misquided  apotheosis  of  what  we  considered 
freedom  and  broad-mindedness,  produced  the  most 
startling  and  anomalous  situations  in  our  national 
life,  including  the  almost  incredible  fact  that,  while 
nominally  at  peace  with  the  world,  the  State  was 
being  bitterly  warred  against  by  cliques  and  parties 
among  its  own  subjects. 

For  instance,  in  any  other  State  than  our  own,  my 
new  acquaintance,  Clement  Elaine,  would  have  been 
safely  disposed  in  a  convenient  prison  cell,  and  his 
flamingly  seditious  journal  would  have  been  promptly 
and  effectually  squashed.  In  England  the  man  was 
free  as  the  Prime  Minister,  and  a  Department  of 
State,  the  Post  Office,  was  engaged  in  the  distribution 
of  the  journal  which  he  devoted  exclusively  to  stirring 
up  animosity  against  that  State,  and  traitorous  oppo- 
sition to  its  constitution. 

91 


THE    MESSAGE 

Further,  Mr.  Elaine's  vitriolic  outpourings,  his  un- 
natural defilement  of  his  own  nest,  were  gravely 
quoted  in  every  newspaper  in  the  Kingdom,  without 
a  hint  of  recognition  of  the  fact  that  they  were  fun- 
damentally criminal  and  a  public  offence.  The  sac- 
rosanct "liberty  of  the  subject"  was  involved;  and 
though  Mr.  Blaine  would  have  been  forcibly  re- 
strained if  he  had  shown  any  tendency  to  injure 
lamp-posts,  or  to  lay  hands  upon  his  own  worthless 
life,  he  was  given  every  facility  in  his  self-appointed 
task  of  inciting  the  public  to  all  sorts  of  offences 
against  the  State,  and  to  a  variety  of  forms  of 
national  suicide. 

It  was  the  commonest  thing  for  a  Member  of  Par- 
liament, a  man  solemnly  sworn  and  consecrated  to  the 
loyal  service  of  the  Crown  and  State,  to  fill  a  signed 
column  of  Clement  Elaine's  paper,  with  an  article  or 
letter  the  whole  avowed  end  of  which  would  be  the 
championing  of  some  national  enemy  or  rival,  or  the 
advocacy  of  means  whereby  a  shrewd  blow  might  be 
struck  against  British  rule  or  British  prestige  in 
some  part  of  the  world. 

I  recall  one  long  and  scurrilous  article  by  a  Mem- 
ber of  Parliament,  urging  rebellious  natives  in  South 
Africa  to  take  heart  of  grace  and  pursue  with  ever- 
increasing  vigour  their  attacks  upon  the  small  and 
isolated  white  populace  which  upheld  British  rule  in 
that  part  of  the  Continent.  I  remember  a  long  and 
venomous  letter  from  another  Member  of  Parliament 
(a  strong  advocate  of  the  State  payment  of  mem- 
bers) defending  in  the  most  ardently  sympathetic 
manner  both  the  action  and  the  sentiments  of  a  munic- 


A    STEP    DOWN 

ipal  official  who  had  torn  down  and  destroyed  the 
Union  Jack  upon  an  occasion  of  public  ceremony. 

We  called  this  sort  of  thing  British  freedom  in 
those  chaotic  days ;  and  when  our  Continental  rivals 
were  not  jeering  at  the  grotesqueness  of  it,  they  were 
lauding  this  particular  form  of  madness  to  the  skies, 
as  well  they  might,  seeing  that  our  insensate  profli- 
gacy and  incontinence  meant  their  gain.  The  cause 
of  a  foreigner,  good,  bad,  or  indifferent  —  that  was 
the  cause  Clement  Blaine  most  loved  to  champion  in 
his  journal.  An  attack  upon  anything  British, 
though  the  author  of  it  might  be  the  basest  creature 
ever  outlawed  from  any  community  —  that  was  cer- 
tain of  ready  and  eager  hospitality  in  the  columns  of 
The  Mass. 

I  can  conceive  of  no  infamy  which  that  journal  was 
not  ready  to  condone,  no  offence  it  would  not  seek 
to  justify  —  save  and  except  the  crime  of  patriotism, 
loyalty,  avowed  love  of  Britain.  And  this  obscene, 
mad-dog  policy,  so  difficult  even  to  imagine  at  this 
time,  was  by  curious  devious  ways  identified  with 
Socialism.  The  Mass  was  called  a  Socialist  organ. 
The  fact  may  have  been  a  libel  upon  Socialism,  if  not 
upon  Socialists ;  but  so  it  was. 

Be  it  said  that  at  Cambridge  I  had  rather  surprised 
the  evangelical  section  of  my  college  (Corpus  Christi) 
by  the  part  I  played  in  founding  a  short-lived  insti- 
tution called  the  Anonymous  Society,  the  choicest 
spirits  in  which  affected  canvas  shirts  and  abstention 
from  the  use  of  neckties.  As  Socialists,  we  invited 
the  waiters  of  the  college  to  a  soiree,  at  which  a  judi- 
cious blend  of  revolutionary  economics  and  bitter 

93 


THE    MESSAGE 

beer  was  relied  upon  to  provide  a  flow  of  reasonable 
and  inexpensive  entertainment.  The  society  lapsed 
after  a  time,  chiefly  owing,  if  I  remember  rightly,  to 
an  insufficiency  of  funds  for  refreshments.  But  I 
had  remained  rather  a  person  to  be  reckoned  with  at 
the  Union. 

I  regarded  my  meeting  with  Clement  Blaine  as 
something  of  an  event,  and  I  very  cheerfully  and 
quite  gratuitously  contributed  an  article  to  his  jour- 
nal dealing  with  some  form  of  government  subvention 
which  I  held  to  be  a  State  duty.  (We  wasted  few 
words  over  the  duties  of  the  citizen  in  those  days. )  It 
was  as  a  result  of  that  article  that  I  was  invited  to 
a  Socialist  soiree  in  which  the  moving  spirit,  at  all 
events  in  the  refreshment-room,  was  Mr.  Clement 
Blaine.  Here  I  met  a  variety  of  queer  fish  who  called 
themselves  Socialists.  They  were  of  both  sexes,  and 
upon  the  whole  they  were  a  silly,  inconsequent  set. 
Their  views  rather  wearied  me,  despite  my  predispo- 
sition to  favour  them. 

They  were  a  kind  of  tepid,  ineffectual  anarchists, 
unconvinced  and  wholly  unconvincing.  Broadly 
speaking,  theirs  was  a  policy  of  blind  reversal.  They 
were  not  constructive,  but  they  were  opposed  vaguely 
to  the  existing  order  of  things,  and,  particularly,  to 
everything  British.  They  pinned  their  faith  to  the 
foreigner  in  all  things,  even  though  the  foreigner's 
whole  energies  might  be  devoted  to  the  honest  en- 
deavour to  raise  conditions  in  his  country  to  a  level 
approaching  the  British  standard.  Any  contention 
against  the  existing  order,  and,  above  all,  anything 

94 


A    STEP    DOWN 

against  Britain,  appealed  directly  to  these  rather 
tawdry  people. 

In  this  drab,  ineffective  gathering,  I  found  one 
point  of  colour,  like  a  red  rose  on  a  dingy  white  table- 
cloth. This  was  Beatrice,  the  daughter  of  Clement 
Blaine.  I  believe  the  man  had  a  wife.  One  figures 
her  as  a  worn  household  drudge.  In  any  case,  she 
made  no  appearance  in  any  of  the  places  in  which 
I  met  Blaine,  or  his  handsome  daughter.  Beatrice 
Blaine  was  a  new  type  to  me.  One  had  read  of  such 
girls,  but  I  had  never  met  them.  And  I  suppose 
novelty  always  has  a  certain  charm  for  youth.  One 
felt  that  Beatrice  had  crossed  the  Rubicon.  Men- 
tally, at  all  events,  one  gathered  that  she  had  thrown 
her  bonnet  over  the  windmill. 

Physically,  materially,  I  have  no  doubt  that  Bea- 
trice was  perfectly  well  qualified  to  take  care  of  hjer- 
self.  But  here  was  a  very  handsome  girl  who  was 
entirely  without  reticence  or  reserve.  With  her,  many 
things  usually  treated  with  respect  were  —  "  all  rot." 
Beatrice's  aim  in  life  was  pleasure,  and  she  not  merely 
admitted,  but  boasted  of  the  fact.  She  did  not  think 
much  of  her  father's  friends  as  individuals.  She 
probably  objected  to  their  dinginess.  But  she  ac- 
claimed herself  a  thoroughgoing  Socialist,  I  think 
because  she  believed  that  Socialism  meant  the  pro- 
vision of  plenty  in  money,  dresses,  pleasures,  and  so 
forth,  for  all  who  were  short  of  these  commodities. 

Perhaps  I  was  a  shade  less  dingy  than  the  others. 
At  all  events,  Beatrice  honoured  me  with  her  favour 
upon  this  occasion,  and  talked  to  me  of  pleasure.  So 
far  as  recollection  serves  me  she  connected  pleasure 

95 


THE    MESSAGE 

chiefly  with  theatres,  restaurants,  the  habit  of  sup- 
ping in  public,  and  the  use  of  hansom  cabs.  At  all 
events,  within  the  week  I  squandered  two  whole 
sovereigns  out  of  my  small  hoard  on  giving  this 
young  pagan  what  she  called  a  "  fluffy  "  evening. 
It  reminded  me  more  than  a  little  of  certain  rather 
frantic  undergraduate  excursions  from  Cambridge. 
But  Beatrice  quoted  luscious  lines  of  minor  poetry, 
and  threw  a  certain  glamour  over  a  quarter  of  the 
town  which  was  a  warren  of  tawdry  immorality ;  the 
hunting-ground  of  a  pallid-faced  battalion  of  alien 
pimps  and  parasites. 

England  was  then  the  one  civilized  country  in  the 
world  which  still  welcomed  upon  its  shores  the  outcast, 
rejected,  refuse  of  other  lands;  and,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  when  foreign  capitals  became  positively  too 
hot  for  irreclaimable  characters,  they  flocked  into 
Whitechapel  and  Soho,  there  to  indulge  their  natural 
bent  for  every  kind  of  criminality  known  to  civiliza- 
tion, save  those  involving  physical  risk  or  physical 
exertion  for  the  criminal.  There  were  then  whole 
quarters  of  the  metropolis  out  of  which  every  native 
resident  had  gradually  been  ousted,  in  which  the  Eng- 
lish language  was  rarely  heard,  except  during  a  police 
raid. 

Tens  of  thousands  of  these  unclassed,  denational- 
ized foreigners  lived  and  waxed  fat  by  playing  upon 
the  foibles  and  pandering  to  the  weaknesses  of  the 
great  city's  native  population.  Others,  of  a  higher 
class,  steadily  ousted  native  labour  in  the  various 
branches  of  legitimate  commerce.  We  know  now,  to 
our  cost,  something  of  the  malignant  danger  these 

96 


A    STEP    DOWN 

foreigners  represented.  In  indirect  ways  one  would 
have  supposed  their  evil  influence  was  sufficiently  ob- 
vious then.  But  I  remember  that  the  parties  repre- 
sented by  such  organs  as  the  Daily  Gazette  prided 
themselves  upon  their  furious  opposition  to  any  hint 
of  precautions  making  for  the  restriction  of  alien 
immigration. 

England  was  the  land  of  the  free,  they  said.  Yet, 
while  boasting  that  England  was  the  refuge  of  the 
persecuted  (as  well  as  the  rejected)  of  all  lands,  we 
were  so  wonderfully  broad-minded  that  we  upheld 
anything  foreign  against  anything  British,  and  were 
intolerant  only  of  English  sentiment,  English  rule, 
English  institutions.  I  believe  Beatrice's  conviction 
of  the  superiority  of  the  Continent  and  of  foreigners 
generally  was  based  upon  the  belief  that: 

"  On  the  Continent  people  can  really  enjoy  them- 
selves. There's  none  of  our  ridiculous  English  puri- 
tanism,  and  early  closing,  and  rubbish  of  that  sort 
there." 

I  am  rather  surprised  that  the  crude  hedonism  of 
Beatrice  should  have  appealed  to  me,  for  my  weak- 
nesses had  never  really  included  mere  fleshly  indul- 
gence. But,  as  I  have  said,  the  girl  had  the  charm 
of  novelty  for  me.  I  remember  satirically  assuring 
myself  that,  upon  the  whole,  her  frank  concentration 
upon  worldly  pleasure  was  more  natural  and  pleasing 
than  Sylvia's  rapt  concentration  upon  other  kinds  of 
self -ministration.  Ours  was  a  period  of  self-indul- 
gence. Beatrice  was,  after  all,  only  a  little  more 
nai've  and  outspoken  than  the  majority  in  her  thirst 

97 


THE    MESSAGE 

for  pleasure.  And  she  was  quite  charming  to  look 
upon. 

Almost  the  first  man  to  whom  I  spoke  regarding 
my  dismissal  from  the  staff  of  the  Daily  Gazette  was 
Clement  Elaine.  I  met  him  in  Fleet  Street,  and  was 
asked  in  to  his  cupboard  of  an  office. 

"  You  are  a  man  who  knows  every  one  in  Fleet 
Street,"  I  said.  "  I  wish  you  would  keep  an  eye  lift- 
ing for  a  journalistic  billet  for  me." 

And  then  I  told  him  that  I  was  leaving  the  Daily 
Gazette,  and  spoke  of  the  work  I  had  done,  and  of 
my  little  journalistic  experiences  at  Cambridge. 

He  combed  his  glossy  black  beard  with  the  fingers 
of  one  hand;  a  white  hand  it  was,  save  where  ciga- 
rettes had  browned  the  first  and  second  fingers;  a 
hand  that  had  never  known  physical  toil,  though  its 
owner  always  addressed  "  working  "  men  as  one  of 
themselves.  He  wore  a  fiery  red  necktie,  and  a  fiery 
diamond  on  the  little  finger  of  the  hand  that  combed 
his  beard.  A  self-indulgent  life  in  the  city  was  tell- 
ing on  him,  but  Clement  Elaine  was  still  rather  a  fine 
figure  of  a  man,  in  his  coarse,  bold  way.  He  had  a 
varnished  look,  and,  dressed  for  the  part,  would  have 
made  a  splendid  stage  pirate. 

"  It's  odd  you  should  have  come  to  me  to-day,"  he 
said.  "  Look  here !  " 

He  handed  me  a  cutting  from  a  daily  paper. 

At  Holloway,  yesterday  afternoon,  an  inquest 
was  held  on  the  body  of  a  man  named  Joseph 
Cartwright,  who  is  said  to  have  been  a  journalist. 
This  man  was  found  dead  upon  his  bed,  fully 

98 


A    STEP    DOWN 

dressed,  on  Tuesday  morning.  The  medical 
evidence  showed  death  to  be  due  to  heart  failure, 
and  indicated  alcoholism  as  the  predisposing 
cause.  A  verdict  was  returned  in  accordance 
with  the  medical  evidence. 

"  He  was  my  assistant  editor,"  said  Clement  Blaine, 
as  I  looked  up  from  my  perusal  of  this  sorry  tale. 

"Really?"    I  said. 

"  Yes,  a  clever  fellow ;  most  accomplished  journal- 
ist, but  "  —  And  Mr.  Blaine  raised  his  elbow  with  a 
significant  gesture,  by  which  he  suggested  the  act  of 
drinking. 

Within  the  hour  I  had  accepted  an  engagement  as 
assistant  editor  of  The  Mass  with  the  magnificent 
sum  of  two  pounds  a  week  by  way  of  remuneration. 

"  It's  poor  pay,"  said  Blaine.  "  And  I  only  wish  I 
could  double  it.  But  that's  all  it  will  run  to  at  pres- 
ent, and  —  well,  of  course,  it  counts  for  something 
to  be  working  for  the  cause  as  directly  as  we  do  in 
The  Mass" 

I  nodded,  not  without  qualms.  My  education  made 
it  impossible  for  me  to  accept  unreservedly  the  most 
scurrilous  features  of  the  journal.  But  the  cause  was 
good  —  I  was  assured  of  that ;  and  I  would  intro- 
duce improvements,  I  thought.  I  was  still  very  inex- 
perienced. Meantime,  I  was  not  to  know  the  carking 
anxiety  of  the  out-of-work.  I  could  still  pay  my  way 
at  the  Bloomsbury  lodging.  This  was  something. 

Beatrice  expressed  herself  as  delighted.  I  was  to 
accumulate  large  sums  in  various  vague  ways,  and 
enjoy  innumerable  "  fluffy  evenings  "  with  her. 

What  a  queer  mad  jumble  of  a  shut-in  world  our 
99 


THE    MESSAGE 

London  was,  and  how  blindly  self-centred  we  all  were 
in  our  pursuit  of  immediate  gain,  in  our  absolute 
indifference  to  the  larger  outside  movements,  the  shap- 
ing of  national  destinies,  the  warring  of  national 
interests !  I  remember  that  we  were  quite  triumphant, 
in  our  little  owlish  way,  that  year ;  for  the  weight  of 
socialistic  and  anti-national,  anti-responsible  feeling 
had  forced  a  time-serving  Cabinet  into  cutting  down 
our  Navy  by  a  quarter  at  one  stroke.  The  hurried 
scramblers  after  money  and  pleasure  were  much  grat- 
ified. 

"  We  can  make  defensive  alliances  with  other  Pow- 
ers," they  said.  "  Meantime  —  retrench,  reduce,  cut 
down,  and  give  us  more  freedom  in  our  race.  Free- 
dom, freedom  —  that's  the  thing ;  and  peace  for  the 
development  of  commerce." 

Undoubtedly,  as  a  people,  we  were  fey. 


100 


FACILIS    DESCENSTTS    AVEENI 

Love  thou  thy  land,  with  love  far-brought 

From  out  the  storied  Past,  and  used 

Within  the  Present,  but  transfused 
Thro'  future  time  by  power  of  thought. 

True  love  turned  round  on  fixed  poles, 
Love  that  endures  not  sordid  ends, 
For  English  natures,  freemen,  friends, 

Thy  brothers  and  immortal  souls. 

But  pamper  not  a  hasty  time, 
Nor  feed  with  crude  imaginings 
The  herd,  wild  hearts  and  feeble  wings 

That  every  sophister  can  lime. 

Deliver  not  the  tasks  of  might 
To  weakness,  neither  hide  the  ray 
From  those,  not  blind,  who  wait  for  day, 

Tho'  sitting  girt  with  doubtful  light.      —  TBKNTSOW. 

AND  now,  as  assistant  editor  of  The  Mass,  I  en- 
tered a  period  of  my  life  upon  which  I  look 
back  as  one  might  who,  by  chance  rather  than  by 
reason  of  any  particular  fitness  for  survival,  had  won 
safely  through  a  whirlpool.  The  next  few  years 
were  a  troublous  time,  a  stormy  era  of  transition, 
for  most  English  people.  For  many  besides  myself 

101 


THE    MESSAGE 

the  period  was  a  veritable  maelstrom  of  confusion, 
of  blind  battling  with  unrecognized  forces,  of  wasted 
effort,  neglected  duty,  futile  struggles,  and  slavish 
inertia. 

At  an  early  stage  I  learned  to  know  Clement  Elaine 
for  a  sweater  of  underpaid  labour,  a  man  as  grossly 
self-indulgent  as  he  was  unprincipled,  as  much  a 
charlatan  as  he  was,  in  many  ways,  an  ignoramus. 
Yet  I  see  now,  more  clearly  than  then,  that  even 
Clement  Elaine  was  not  all  bad.  He  was  not  even 
completely  a  charlatan.  He  believed  he  was  justified 
in  making  all  the  money  he  could,  in  any  way  that 
was  possible.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
at  that  time  most  people  really  thought,  whatever 
they  might  say,  that  the  first  and  most  obvious  duty 
in  life  was  to  make  money  for  themselves. 

Then,  too,  I  think  Elaine  really  believed  that  the 
sort  of  anti-national,  socialistic  theories  he  advocated 
would  make  for  the  happiness  of  the  people ;  for  the 
profit  and  benefit  of  the  majority.  He  was  blinded 
by  lack  of  knowledge  of  history  and  of  human  nature. 
He  was  an  extreme  example,  perhaps,  but,  after  all, 
his  mistaken  idea  that  happiness  depended  upon  per- 
sonal possession  of  this  and  that,  upon  having  and 
holding,  was  very  generally  accepted  at  that  time. 
The  old  saving  sense  of  duty,  love  of  country,  na- 
tional responsibility,  and  pride  of  race,  had  faded 
and  become  unreal  to  a  people  feverishly  bent  upon 
personal  gain  only.  Nelson's  famous  signal  and 
watchword  was  kept  alive,  in  inscriptions ;  in  men's 
hearts  and  minds  it  no  longer  had  any  meaning ;  it 
made  no  appeal.  This  is  to  speak  broadly,  of  course, 
102 


FACILIS    DESCENSUS    AVERNI 

and  of  the  majority.  We  had  some  noble  exceptions 
to  the  rule. 

In  looking  back  now  upon  that  period,  it  seems  to 
me,  as  I  suppose  to  all  who  lived  through  it,  such 
a  tragedy  of  confusion,  of  sordidness,  and  of  futility, 
that  one  is  driven  to  take  too  sweepingly  pessimistic 
a  view  of  the  time.  I  have  said  a  good  deal  of  the 
anti-national  sentiment,  because  it  was  undoubtedly 
in  the  ascendant  then.  As  history  shows  us,  this 
sentiment  ruled ;  by  it  the  ship  of  state  was  steered ; 
by  it  the  defences  of  the  Empire  were  cut  down  and 
down  to  the  ultimate  breaking  point.  We  call  the 
administration  of  that  period  criminally  unpatriotic. 
As  such  "  The  Destroyers  "  must  always  figure  in 
history.  But  we  must  not  forget  that  then,  as  now, 
we  English  people  had  as  good  a  Government  as  we 
deserved.  The  spirit  of  selfish  irresponsibility  was 
not  confined  to  Whitehall. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  no 
patriotic  party  existed.  There  was  a  patriotic  party, 
and  the  exigencies  of  the  time  inspired  some  of  its 
leaders  nobly.  But  the  sheer  weight  of  numbers,  of 
indifference,  and  of  selfishness  to  which  this  party 
was  opposed  was  too  much  for  it.  The  best  method  of 
realizing  this  nowadays  is  by  the  study  of  the  news- 
paper files  for  the  early  years  of  the  century.  From 
these  it  will  be  seen  that  even  the  people  and  journals 
in  whom  devoted  patriotism  survived,  even  the  leaders 
who  gave  up  their  time  and  energy  (politics  gave  us 
such  a  man,  the  Army  another,  the  Navy  another, 
literature  another,  and  journalism  gave  us  an  editor 
in  whom  the  right  fire  burned  brightly)  to  the  task  of 

103 


THE    MESSAGE 

warning  and  adjuring  the  public,  and  seeking  to 
awaken  the  nation  to  the  lost  sense  of  its  dangers, 
its  duties,  and  its  responsibilities ;  even  these  were 
forced  by  the  weight  of  public  selfishness  into  using 
an  almost  apologetic  tone,  with  reference  to  the  com- 
mon calls  of  patriotism  and  Imperial  unity. 

People  dismissed  an  obvious  challenge  of  the 
national  conscience  with  a  hurried  and  impatient 
wave  of  the  hand.  They  were  tired  of  this ;  they  had 
heard  enough  of  the  other;  they  were  occupied  with 
local  interests  of  the  moment,  and  could  not  be  both- 
ered with  this  or  that  consideration  affecting  the  wel- 
fare of  the  world-wide  shores  of  greater  outside 
Britain.  And,  accordingly,  we  find  that  the  most 
patriotic  and  public- spirited  journal  was  obliged,  for 
its  life,  to  devote  more  attention  to  a  football  match 
at  the  Crystal  Palace  than  to  a  change  of  public 
policy  affecting  the  whole  commercial  future  of  a  part 
of  the  Empire  twenty  times  greater  than  Britain. 
There  were  other  journals,  organs  of  the  self-centred 
majority,  that  would  barely  even  mention  an  Impe- 
rial development  of  that  sort,  and  then  but  casually, 
as  a  matter  of  no  particular  interest  to  their  readers ; 
as  indeed  it  was. 

I  do  not  think  that  retrospection  has  coloured  my 
view  too  darkly  when  I  say  that  my  brief  experience 
in  Fleet  Street  made  me  feel  that  the  Daily  Gazette 
party,  the  supporters  of  "  The  Destroyers "  (as 
naval  folk  had  named  the  Government  of  the  day) 
consisted  of  a  mass  of  smugly  hypocritical  self-seek- 
ers; and  that  the  party  I  served  under  Clement 
Blaine  were  a  mass  of  blatantly  frank  self-seekers. 

104 


FACILIS    DESCENSUS    AVERNI 

Such  generalizations  can  never  be  quite  just,  how- 
ever. There  were  earnest  and  devoted  men  in  every 
section  of  the  community.  But,  as  a  generalization, 
as  indicating  the  typical  characteristics  of  the  parties, 
I  fear  that  my  view  has  been  proved  correct. 

It  would  be  quite  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  in  the 
political  world  the  shortcomings  were  all  on  one  side. 
Writers  like  myself,  even  men  like  Clement  Blaine, 
had  only  too  much  justification  for  the  contempt  they 
poured  upon  the  Conservative  party.  Selfishness,  in- 
dolence, and  the  worship  of  the  fossilized  party  spirit, 
had  eaten  into  the  very  vitals  of  this  section  of  the 
political  world.  The  form  of  madness  we  called  party 
loyalty  made  the  best  men  we  had  willing  to  sacrifice 
national  to  personal  interests.  So-and-so  must  retain 
his  place ;  loyalty  to  the  party  demands  our  support 
there  and  there.  We  must  give  it,  whatever  the  con- 
sequences. The  thing  is  not  easy  to  understand ;  but 
it  was  so,  and  the  strongest  and  best  men  of  the  day 
were  culpable  in  this. 

The  farther  my  London  experiences  took  me,  the 
greater  became  the  mass  of  my  shattered  illusions, 
broken  ideals,  and  lost  hopes.  I  remember  my  reflec- 
tions during  a  brief  visit  I  paid  to  my  mother  in 
Dorset,  when  I  had  spent  an  evening  talking  with  my 
sister  Lucy's  husband.  Doctor  Woodthrop  was  a 
good  fellow  enough,  and  my  sister  seemed  happier 
with  him  than  one  would  have  expected,  remembering 
that  it  was  rather  the  desire  for  freedom,  than  love, 
which  gave  her  to  him. 

Woodthrop  was  popular,  honest,  steady-going;  a 
fine,  typical  Englishman  of  the  period,  I  suppose. 

105 


THE    MESSAGE 

In  politics  he  was  as  his  father  before  him,  though 
the  name  had  changed  from  Tory  to  Conservative. 
He  talked  politics  for  a  week  at  election  time.  I 
would  not  say  that  he  ever  thought  politics.  I  know 
that  he  had  no  knowledge,  and  less  interest,  where  the 
affairs  of  his  country  were  concerned,  when  I  met  and 
talked  with  him  during  that  visit.  The  country's  de- 
fences were  actually  of  far  less  importance  in  his  eyes 
than  the  country's  cricket  averages.  As  for  either 
social  reform  interests  in  England,  or  the  affairs  of 
the  Empire  outside  England,  he  simply  could  not  be 
induced  to  give  them  even  conversational  breathing 
space.  They  were  as  exotic  to  my  sister's  husband 
as  the  ethics  of  esoteric  Buddhism.  But  he  was  a 
thick  and  thin  Conservative.  To  be  sure,  he  would 
have  said,  nothing  would  cause  him  to  waver  in  that. 

As  for  myself,  I  defended  the  anti-national  party 
in  its  repudiation  of  Imperial  responsibility  by  argu- 
ing that  the  domestic  needs  of  the  country  were  too 
urgent  and  great  to  admit  of  any  kind  of  expendi- 
ture, in  money  or  energy,  upon  outside  affairs.  We 
did  not  recognize  that  internal  reform  and  content 
were  absolutely  incompatible  with  shameless  neglect 
of  fundamental  duties. 

We  were  as  sailors  who  should  concentrate  upon 
drying  and  cleaning  their  cabin,  seeking  at  all  haz- 
ards to  make  that  comfortable,  while  refusing  to 
spare  time  for  the  ship's  pumps,  though  the  water 
was  rising  in  her  hold  from  a  score  of  external  fis- 
sures. Our  anti-nationalists  and  Little  Englanders 
were  little  cabin-dwellers,  shirkers  from  the  open  deck, 
careless  of  the  ship's  hull,  and  masts,  and  sails,  busily 

106 


bent  only  upon  the  enrichment  of  their  particular 
divisions  among  her  saloons. 

In  the  early  days  of  my  engagement  as  assistant 
editor  of  The  Mass,  I  think  I  may  claim  that  I  worked 
hard  and  with  honest  intent  to  make  the  paper  repre- 
sent truly  what  I  conceived  to  be  the  good  and  helpful 
side  of  Socialism,  of  social  progress  and  reform. 
But,  if  I  am  to  be  frank,  I  fear  I  must  admit  that 
within  six  months  of  my  first  engagement  by  Clement 
Elaine,  I  had  ceased  to  entertain  any  sincere  hope  or 
ambition  in  this  direction.  And  yet  I  remained  as- 
sistant editor  of  The  Mass. 

The  two  statements  doubtless  redound  to  my  dis- 
credit, and  I  have  little  excuse  to  offer.  The  work 
represented  bread  and  butter  for  me,  and  that  counted 
for  something,  of  course.  But  I  will  admit  that  I 
think  I  could  have  found  some  more  worthy  employ- 
ment, and  should  have  done  so  but  for  Beatrice 
Blaine,  my  employer's  daughter. 

Time  and  time  again  my  gorge  rose  at  being 
obliged  to  play  my  part  —  very  often,  as  a  writer, 
the  principal  part  —  in  what  I  knew  to  be  an  abso- 
lutely dishonest  piece  of  journalism.  Once  I  remem- 
ber refusing  to  write  a  grossly  malicious  and  untrue 
representation  of  certain  actions  of  John  Crondall's 
in  the  Transvaal.  But  I  am  ashamed  to  say  I  revised 
the  proofs  of  the  lying  thing,  and  saw  it  to  press, 
when  a  hireling  of  Clement  Elaine's  had  prepared  it. 
The  man  was  a  discharged  servant  of  Crondall's,  a 
convicted  thief,  as  I  afterwards  learned,  as  well  as  a 
most  abandoned  liar.  But  his  scurrilous  fabrication, 
after  publication  in  The  Mass,  was  quoted  at  length 

107 


THE    MESSAGE 

by  the  T)aily  Gazette,  and  by  the  journals  of  that 
persuasion  throughout  the  country. 

I  hardly  know  how  to  explain  my  relations  with 
Blaine's  daughter.  I  suppose  the  main  point  is  she 
was  beautiful,  in  the  sense  that  certain  cats  are  beau- 
tiful. I  rarely  heard  of  my  Weybridge  friends  now, 
and  never,  directly,  of  Sylvia.  My  life  seemed  in- 
finitely remote  from  that  of  the  luxurious  Wheeler 
menage.  When  I  chanced  to  earn  a  few  guineas  with 
my  pen  outside  the  littered  office  of  The  Mass  (where 
the  bulk  of  the  editorial  work  fell  to  me),  the  money 
was  almost  invariably  devoted  to  the  entertainment  of 
Beatrice.  She  was  in  several  ways  not  unlike  a  kitten, 
or  something  feline,  of  larger  growth:  the  panther, 
for  example,  in  Balzac's  thrilling  story,  "  A  Passion 
in  the  Desert." 

I  have  never,  before  or  since,  met  any  woman  so 
totally  devoid  of  the  moral  sense  as  Beatrice.  Yet 
she  had  a  heart  that  was  not  bad ;  indeed  it  was  a 
tender  heart.  But  there  was  no  moral  sense  to  guide 
and  balance  her. 

I  think  of  Beatrice  as  very  much  a  product  of  that 
time.  Her  own  personal  enjoyment,  pleasure,  indul- 
gence; these  formed  alike  the  centre  and  the  limit 
of  her  thoughts  and  aims.  And  the  suggestion  that 
serious  thought  or  energy  should  be  given  to  any 
other  end,  struck  Beatrice  as  necessarily  insincere  and 
absurd.  As  for  duty,  the  word  had  no  more  real 
application  to  her  own  life  as  Beatrice  saw  it  than  the 
counsels  of  old-time  chivalry  for  the  pursuit  of  the 
Holy  Grail. 

Soberly  considered,  this  is  doubtless  very  grievous. 
108 


FACILIS    DESCENSUS    AVERNI 

But  it  must  be  said  that  if  Beatrice  was  singular  in 
this,  her  singularity  lay  rather  in  her  frank  disclosure 
of  her  attitude  than  in  the  attitude  itself.  I  am  not 
sure  that  morally  her  absorption  in  such  crude  pleas- 
ures as  she  knew,  was  a  whit  more  culpable  than  the 
equal  absorption  of  nine  people  out  of  ten  at  that 
time,  in  money-getting,  in  sport,  in  society  functions, 
or  in  sheer  idleness.  The  same  oblivion  to  the  sense 
of  duty  was  very  generally  characteristic ;  though  in 
other  matters,  no  doubt,  the  moral  sense  was  more 
active.  In  Beatrice  it  simply  was  not  present  at  all. 

All  this  was  tolerably  clear  to  me  even  then ;  but  I 
will  not  pretend  that  it  interfered  much  with  the 
physical  and  emotional  attraction  which  Beatrice  had 
for  me.  Apart  from  her  my  life  was  very  drab  in 
colour.  I  had  no  recreations.  In  my  time  at  Rugby 
and  at  Cambridge  we  either  practically  ignored  sport 
(so  far,  at  all  events,  as  actual  participation  in  it 
went),  or  lived  for  it.  I  had  very  largely  ignored  it. 
Now,  Beatrice  Elaine  represented,  not  exactly  recrea- 
tion, perhaps  —  no,  not  that  I  think  —  but  gaiety. 
The  hours  I  spent  in  her  company  were  the  only 
form  of  gaiety  that  entered  into  my  life. 

My  feeling  for  Beatrice  was  not  serious  love,  not 
at  all  a  grand  passion ;  but  denying  myself  the  occa- 
sional pleasure  of  ministering  to  her  appetite  for 
little  outings  would  have  been  a  harder  task  for  me 
than  the  acceptation  of  Sylvia  Wheeler's  dismissal. 
My  attentions  to  Beatrice  were  very  much  those  of 
Balzac's  Proven9al  to  his  panther,  after  he  had  over- 
come his  first  terrors. 

There  were  times  when  her  acceptance  of  gifts  or 
109 


THE    MESSAGE 

compliments  from  another  man  made  me  believe  my- 
self really  in  love  with  Beatrice.  Then  some  pecul- 
iarly distasteful  aspect  of  my  journalistic  work  would 
be  forced  upon  me;  I  would  receive  some  striking 
illustration  of  the  hopelessly  sordid  character  of 
Elaine  and  his  circle,  of  the  policy  of  The  Mass,  of 
the  general  trend  of  my  life ;  and,  seeing  Beatrice's 
indifferent  acceptance  of  all  this  venality,  I  would 
turn  from  her  with  a  certain  sense  of  revulsion  —  for 
three  days.  After  that,  I  would  return  to  handsome 
Beatrice,  with  her  feline  graces  and  her  warm  colour- 
ing, as  a  chilly,  tired  man  turns  from  his  work  to  his 
fireside. 

In  short,  as  time  went  on,  I  became  as  indifferent 
to  ends  and  aims  as  the  most  callous  among  those  at 
whose  indifference  to  matters  of  real  moment  I  had 
once  girded  so  vehemently.  And  I  lacked  their  ex- 
cuse. I  cut  no  figure  at  all  in  the  race  for  money 
and  pleasure;  unless  my  clinging  to  Beatrice  be 
accounted  pursuit  of  pleasure.  Certainly  it  lacked 
the  rapt  absorption  which  characterized  the  multitude 
really  in  the  race.  I  fear  I  was  rapidly  degenerating 
into  a  common  type  of  Fleet  Street  hack ;  into  noth- 
ing more  than  Clement  Elaine's  assistant.  And  then 
a  quite  new  influence  came  into  my  life. 


110 


XI 


MORNING    CALLERS 

A  woman  mixed  of  such  fine  elements 
That  were  all  virtue  and  religion  dead 
She'd  make  them  newly,  being  what  she  was. 

GEORGE  ELIOT. 

A  SANDY  -  HAIRED  youth-of-all-work,  named 
Rivers,  spent  his  days  in  the  box  we  called  the 
front  office;  a  kind  of  lobby  really,  by  which  one 
entered  the  tolerably  large  and  desperately  untidy 
room  in  which  Blaine  and  myself  compiled  each  issue 
of  The  Mass.  Blaine  spent  a  good  slice  of  all  his 
days  in  keeping  appointments,  usually  in  Fleet  Street 
bars. 

My  days  were  spent  in  the  main  office  of  the  paper, 
among  the  files,  the  scissors  and  paste,  the  books  of 
reference,  and  the  three  Gargantuan  waste-paper 
baskets.  Here  at  different  times  I  interviewed  men  of 
every  European  nationality  and  every  known  calling, 
besides  innumerable  followers  of  no  recognized  trade 
or  profession.  Among  them  all  I  cannot  call  to  mind 
more  than  two  or  three  who,  by  the  most  charitable 
stretch  of  imagination,  could  have  been  called  gentle- 
men. 

Most  of  them  were  obviously,  and  in  all  ways  seedy, 
shady  characters  —  furtive,  wordy  creatures,  full  of 

111 


THE    MESSAGE 

vague,  involved  grievances.  The  greater  proportion 
were  foreigners ;  scallywags  from  the  mean  streets  of 
every  Continental  capital ;  men  familiar  with  prisons ; 
men  who  talked  of  the  fraternity  of  labour,  and 
never  did  any  work ;  men  full  of  windy  plans  for  the 
enrichment  of  humanity,  who  themselves  must  always 
borrow  and  never  repay  —  money,  food,  shelter,  and 
the  other  things  for  which  honest  folk  give  their 
labour. 

If  an  English  Cabinet  Minister  had  offered  us  an 
explanation  of  any  political  development  we  should 
have  had  small  use  for  his  contribution  in  The  Mass, 
unless  as  an  advertisement  of  our  importance.  For 
their  teaching,  for  the  text  they  gave  us  in  our  ful- 
minations,  we  greatly  preferred  the  rancorous  and 
generally  scurrilous  vapourings  of  some  unknown 
alien  dumped  upon  our  shores  for  the  relief  and  bene- 
fit of  his  own  country. 

We  wanted  no  information  from  Admiralty  Lords 
about  the  Navy,  from  commanding  officers  about  the 
Army,  from  pro-Consuls  about  the  Colonies,  or  from 
the  Foreign  Office  about  foreign  relations.  But  a 
deserter  or  a  man  dismissed  from  either  of  the  Serv- 
ices, a  broker  ne'er-do-well  rejected  as  unfit  by  one 
of  the  Colonies,  or  a  foreign  agitator  with  stories  to 
tell  of  Britain's  duplicity  abroad ;  these  were  all  wel- 
come fish  for  our  net,  and  folk  whom  it  was  my  duty 
to  receive  with  respectful  attention.  From  their  per- 
jured lips  it  became  my  mechanical  duty  to  extract 
and  publish  wisdom  for  the  use  of  our  readers  in  the 
guidance  of  their  lives  and  the  exercise  of  their  rights 
as  citizens  and  ratepayers.  I  became  adept  at  the 

112 


work,  and  in  the  end  accomplished  it  daily  without 
interest,  and  with  only  occasional  qualms  of  con- 
science. It  was  my  living. 

On  a  sunshiny  morning  in  June,  which  I  remember 
very  well,  the  sandy-haired  Rivers  brought  me  a  visit- 
ing-card upon  which  I  read  the  name  of  "  Miss  Con- 
stance Grey."  In  one  corner  of  the  card  the  words 
"  Cape  Town  "  had  been  crossed  out  and  a  London 
address  written  over  them. 

I  was  engaged  at  the  time  with  a  large,  pale,  fat 
man  from  Stettin,  whose  mission  it  was  to  show  me 
that  the  socialist  working  men  of  the  Fatherland 
dearly  loved  their  comrades  in  England,  and  that  the 
paying  of  taxes  for  the  defence  of  these  islands  was  a 
preposterously  absurd  thing,  for  the  reason  that  the 
Socialists  would  never  allow  Germany  to  go  to  war 
with  England  or  with  any  other  country.  "  The 
Destroyers,"  in  their  truckling  to  Demos,  had  al- 
ready cut  down  Naval  and  Army  estimates  by  more 
than  one-half  since  their  rise  to  power,  and  our 
Stettin  ambassador  was  priming  me  regarding  a 
demand  for  further  reductions,  prior  to  actual  dis- 
armament, to  provide  funds  for  the  fixing  of  a  mini- 
mum day's  pay  and  a  maximum  day's  work. 

The  gentleman  from  Stettin  was  to  provide  us  with 
material  for  a  special  article  and  a  leading  article. 
His  proposals  were  to  be  made  a  "  feature."  How- 
ever, I  thought  I  had  gone  far  enough  with  him  at 
this  time;  and  so,  looking  from  his  pendulous  jowl 
to  the  card  in  my  hand,  I  told  Rivers  to  ask  the  lady 
to  wait  for  two  minutes,  and  to  say  that  I  would  see 
her  then.  I  remember  Herr  Mitmann  found  the  occa- 

113 


THE    MESSAGE 

sion  opportune  for  the  airing  of  what  I  suppose  he 
would  have  called  his  sense  of  humour.  His  English 
and  his  front  teeth  were  equally  badly  broken,  and 
his  taste  in  jokes  was  almost  as  swinishly  gross  as  his 
appearance.  But  I  was  able  to  be  quit  of  him  at 
length,  and  then  Rivers  ushered  in  Miss  Constance 
Grey. 

As  I  rose  to  provide  my  visitor  with  a  chair,  I 
received  the  impression  that  she  was  a  young  and 
quietly  well-dressed  woman,  with  a  notable  pair  of 
dark  eyes.  I  thought  of  her  as  being  no  more  than 
five-and-twenty  years  of  age  and  pleasant  to  look 
upon.  But  her  eyes  were  the  feature  that  seized  one's 
attention.  They  produced  an  impression  of  light 
and  brilliancy,  of  vigour,  intelligence,  and  charm. 

"  I  called  to  see  you  at  the  office  of  the  Daily 
Gazette,  Mr.  Mordan,  and  this  was  the  only  address 
of  yours  they  could  give  me,  or  I  should  have  hesi- 
tated about  intruding  on  you  in  working  hours.  I 
bring  you  an  introduction  from  John  Crondall." 

And  with  that  she  handed  me  a  letter  in  Crondall's 
writing,  and  nodded  in  a  friendly  way  when  I  asked 
permission  to  read  it  at  once. 

"  Please  do,"  she  said. 

She  had  no  particular  accent,  but  yet  her  speech 
differed  slightly  from  that  of  the  conventional  Eng- 
lishwoman of  her  class  —  the  refined  and  well-edu- 
cated Englishwoman,  that  is.  I  suppose  the  difference 
was  rather  one  of  expression,  tone,  and  choice  of 
phrase  than  a  matter  of  accent.  I  doubt  if  one  could 
easily  find  an  example  of  it  nowadays,  increased  com- 
munication having  so  much  broadened  our  own  collo- 

114 


'RIVERS  USHERED  IN  Miss  CONSTANCE  GREY" 


MORNING    CALLERS 

quial  diction  that  many  of  its  conventional  peculiari- 
ties have  disappeared.  But  it  existed  then,  and  after 
a  time  I  learned  to  place  it  as  characteristic  of  the 
speech  of  Greater  Britain,  as  distinguished  from  the 
English  of  those  of  us  who  lived  always  in  this  capital 
centre  of  the  Empire. 

Miss  Grey  had  the  Colonial  directness  and  vividness 
of  speech;  a  larger,  freer  diction  upon  the  whole 
than  that  of  the  Londoner  born  and  bred ;  more  racy, 
less  clipped  and  formal,  but,  in  certain  ways,  more 
correct.  The  society  cliche,  and  the  society  fads  of 
abbreviation  and  accent,  were  missing;  and  in  their 
place  was  an  easy,  idiomatic  directness,  distinctly 
noticeable  to  a  man  like  myself  who  had  actually 
never  been  out  of  England.  This  it  was  that  first 
struck  me  about  Miss  Grey ;  this  and  the  warm  bril- 
liance of  her  eyes:  a  graphic,  moving  speech,  a 
frank,  compelling  gaze ;  both  indicative,  as  it  seemed 
to  me,  of  broadly  sympathetic  understanding. 

I  read  John  Crondall's  kindly  letter  with  a  good 
deal  of  interest,  moved  by  the  fact  that  his  terse, 
friendly  phrases  recalled  to  me  a  phase  of  my  own 
life  which,  though  no  more  than  a  couple  of  years 
past,  seemed  to  me  wonderfully  remote.  I  had  been 
new  to  London  and  to  Fleet  Street  then,  full  of  as- 
pirations, of  earnestness,  of  independent  aims  and 
hopes;  fresh  from  the  University  and  the  more 
leisured  days  of  my  life  as  the  son  of  the  rector  of 
Tarn  Regis.  I  had  had  glimpses  of  much  that  was 
sordid  and  squalid  in  London  life,  at  the  period  John 
Crondall's  letter  recalled,  but  as  yet  there  had  been  no 
sordidness  in  my  own  life.  All  that  was  far  other- 

115 


THE    MESSAGE 

wise  now,  I  felt.  Cambridge  and  Dorset  were  a  long 
way  from  the  office  of  The  Mass.  I  thought  of  the 
greasy  Teuton  nondescript  for  whom  I  had  kept 
Miss  Grey  waiting,  and  I  felt  colour  rise  in  my  face 
as  I  read  John  Crondall's  letter; 

"  I  expect  you  have  been  burgeoning  mightily 
since  I  left  London,  and  I  should  not  be  surprised 
to  learn  that  you  have  put  the  Daily  Gazette  and  its 
kind  definitely  behind  you.  You  remember  our  talks? 
Tut,  my  dear  fellow,  Liberalism,  Conservatism,  Radi- 
calism —  it's  of  not  the  slightest  consequence,  and 
they're  all  much  of  a  muchness.  The  thing  is  to 
stand  to  one's  duty  as  a  citizen  of  the  Empire,  not  as 
a  member  of  this  or  that  little  tin  coterie ;  and  if  we 
stick  honourably  to  that,  nothing  else  matters.  You 
will  like  Constance  Grey ;  that  is  why  I  have  asked 
her  to  look  you  up.  She's  sterling  all  through ;  her 
father's  daughter  to  the  backbone.  And  he  was  the 
man  of  whom  Talbot  said :  '  Give  me  two  Greys,  and  ' 
—  and  a  couple  of  other  men  he  mentioned  —  '  and  a 
free  hand,  and  Whitehall  could  go  to  sleep  with  its 
head  on  South  Africa,  and  never  be  disturbed 
again.'  "  —  When  Crondall  quoted  his  dead  chief,  the 
man  whose  personality  had  dominated  British  South 
Africa,  one  felt  he  had  said  his  utmost.  — "  The 
principal  thing  that  takes  her  to  London  now,  I  be- 
lieve, is  detail  connected  with  a  special  series  she  has 
been  engaged  upon  for  The  Times;  fine  stuff,  from 
what  I  have  seen  of  it.  It  is  marvellous  the  grip  this 
one  little  bit  of  a  girl  has  of  South  African  affairs." 

"  Yes,"  I  thought,  now  the  fact  was  mentioned, 
"  I  suppose  she  is  small." 

116 


MORNING    CALLERS 

"  I  hope  the  articles  will  be  well  read,  for  there's  a 
heap  of  the  vitals  of  South  Africa  in  them ;  and  even 
if  they  are  to  cut  us  adrift  altogether,  it's  as  well 
*  The  Destroyers  '  should  know  a  little  about  us,  and 
the  country.  Constance  Grey's  name  and  introduc- 
tions will  take  her  anywhere  in  London,  or  I  would 
have  asked  your  help  in  that  way." 

I  thought  of  Clement  Elaine's  friends,  my  own 
Fleet  Street  circle,  and  shifted  uncomfortably  in  my 
chair. 

"  As  it  is,  the  boot  may  be  rather  on  the  other  leg, 
and  she  may  be  of  some  service  to  you.  But  in  any 
case,  I  want  you  to  know  each  other,  because  you  are 
a  good  chap,  and  will  interest  her,  I  know ;  and 
because  she  is  of  the  bigger  Britain  and  will  interest 
you.  Things  political  are,  of  course,  looking  pretty 
blue  for  us  all,  and  your  particular  friends  —  I 
rather  hope  perhaps  they're  not  so  much  your  friends 
by  now  —  are  certainly  doing  their  level  best  to  cut 
all  moorings.  But  one  must  keep  pegging  aVay. 
The  more  cutting  for  them,  the  more  splicing  for  us. 
But  I  do  wish  we  could  blindfold  Europe  until  these 
'  Destroyers  '  had  got  enough  rope,  and  satisfacto- 
rily hanged  themselves ;  for  if  they  go  much  farther, 
their  hanging  will  come  too  late  to  save  the  situation. 
Well,  salue ! " 

I  allowed  my  eyes  to  linger  over  the  tail-end  of  the 
letter,  while  I  thought.  I  was  sensible  of  a  very  real 
embarrassment.  There  seemed  a  kind  of  treachery  to 
John  Crondall,  a  kind  of  unfairness  to  Miss  Grey,  in 
my  receiving  her  there  at  all.  By  this  time  one  had 
no  illusions  left  regarding  Clement  Blaine  and  his 

117 


THE    MESSAGE 

circle,  nor  about  The  Mass.  I  knew  that,  at  heart, 
I  was  ashamed,  and  with  good  reason,  of  my  connec- 
tion with  both.  Still,  there  I  was ;  it  was  my  living ; 
and  —  I  suppose  my  eyes  must  have  wandered  from 
the  letter.  At  all  events,  evidently  seeing  that  I  had 
finished  reading  it,  my  visitor  spoke. 

"  I  had  an  introduction  to  the  editor  of  the  Daily 
Gazette,  so  I  took  advantage  of  being  there  this  af- 
ternoon to  see  him.  A  nice  man,  I  thought,  though  I 
don't  care  for  his  paper.  He  remembered  you  as 
soon  as  I  mentioned  your  name,  and  told  me  you  — 
you  were  here.  He  seemed  quite  sorry  you  had  left 
his  paper;  but  I  am  sure  I  can  understand  the  at- 
traction of  a  position  in  which  the  whole  concern  is 
more  or  less  in  one's  own  hands.  Mr.  Delaney  found 
me  a  copy  of  The  Mass;  so  I  have  been  studying 
you  before  calling.  Perhaps  you  have  inadvertently 
done  so  much  by  me,  through  The  Times  —  a  rather 
high  and  dry  old  institution,  isn't  it  ?  " 

Naturally  I  had  punctuated  these  remarks  of  hers, 
here  and  there.  She  had  a  very  bright,  alert  way  in 
talking,  and  now  she  added,  easily,  a  sentence  or  two 
to  the  effect  that  it  would  be  a  dull  world  if  we  all 
held  precisely  the  same  views.  She  did  the  thing  well, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  I  found  myself  chatting  away 
with  her  in  the  most  friendly  manner.  She  managed 
with  the  utmost  deftness  to  remove  all  ground  for  my 
embarrassment  regarding  my  position.  She  talked 
for  awhile  of  South  Africa,  and  the  life  she  had 
lived  there  prior  to  her  father's  death ;  but  she 
touched  no  topic  which  contained  any  controversial 

118 


element.    It  seemed  her  aunt,  a  sister  of  her  father's, 
had  accompanied  her  to  England,  and  she  said: 

"  I  promised  my  aunt,  Mrs.  Van  Homrey,  that  I 
would  induce  you  to  spare  us  an  evening  soon.  She 
loves  meeting  friends  of  John  Crondall.  We  dine  at 
eight,  but  would  fix  any  other  hour  if  it  suited  you 
better." 

The  end  of  it  was  I  promised  to  dine  with  Miss 
Grey  and  her  aunt  in  South  Kensington  on  the  follow- 
ing evening,  and,  after  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  very 
pleasant  chat  (twice  interrupted  by  Rivers,  who  had 
people  in  his  cupboard  waiting  to  see  me)  my  visitor 
rose  to  take  her  departure,  with  apologies  for  having 
trespassed  upon  a  busy  man's  time.  I  told  her  with 
some  warmth  that  the  loss  of  my  time  was  of  no 
importance,  and,  with  a  thought  as  to  the  nature  of 
my  petty  routine,  I  repeated  the  assurance.  She 
smiled : 

"  Ah,  that's  just  the  masculine  insincerity  of  your 
gallantry,"  she  said,  "  unworn,  I  see,  by  working 
with  women.  John  Crondall  would  have  sent  me 
packing." 

"  No  doubt  his  time  is  of  more  value  —  better 
occupied." 

I  had  a  mental  vision  of  Clement  Elaine  (who  grew 
stouter  and  slacker  day  by  day)  sitting  drinking  with 
Herr  Mitmann  of  Stettin,  in  a  favourite  bar,  within 
fifty  yards  of  the  office. 

"  Still  the  insincerity  of  politeness,"  she  laughed. 
"  You  forget  I  have  read  The  Mass.  I  find  you  a 
terribly  earnest  partisan;  very  keenly  occupied,  I 
should  say.  Till  to-morrow  evening,  then !  " 

119 


THE    MESSAGE 

And  she  was  gone,  and  Rivers  was  leading  in,  like 
a  bear  on  a  cord,  a  tousled  Polish  Jew  named  Kraun- 
ski,  who  was  teaching  us  how  the  Metropolitan  Police 
Force  should  be  run,  and  how  tyrannically  its  wicked 
myrmidons  oppressed  worthy  citizens  of  Houndsditch, 
like  Mr.  Kraunski  —  quite  a  good  Mass  feature. 

So  I  stepped  back  again,  feeling  as  though  Con- 
stance Grey  had  carried  away  the  pale  London  sun- 
light with  her  when  she  left  my  littered  den. 


120 


XII 


SATURDAY    NIGHT    IN    LONDON 

"  Corrupted  freemen  are  the  worst  of  slaves." 

DAVID  GARRICK. 

I  REMEMBER  that  the  evening  of  the  day  fol- 
lowing my  dinner  engagement  with  Miss  Grey 
and  her  aunt  was  consecrate,  by  previous  arrange- 
ment, to  Beatrice  Blaine.  I  had  received  seven 
guineas  a  couple  of  days  before  for  a  rather  silly 
and  sensational  descriptive  article,  the  subject  of 
which  had  been  suggested  by  Beatrice.  Indeed,  she 
had  made  me  write  it,  and  liked  the  thing  when  it 
appeared  in  print.  It  described  certain  aspects  of 
the  quarter  of  London  which  stood  for  pleasure  in 
her  eyes ;  the  quarter  bounded  by  Charing  Cross  and 
Oxford  Street,  Leicester  Square  and  Hyde  Park 
Corner. 

I  think  I  would  gladly  have  escaped  the  evening 
with  Beatrice  if  I  could  have  done  so  fairly.  Seeing 
that  I  could  not  do  this,  and  that  my  mood  seemed 
chilly,  I  plunged  with  more  than  usual  extravagance, 
and  sought  to  work  up  all  the  gaiety  I  could.  I  had 
a  vague  feeling  that  I  owed  so  much  to  Beatrice; 
that  the  occasion  in  some  way  marked  a  crisis  in  our 
relations.  I  did  not  mentally  call  it  a  last  extrava- 


THE    MESSAGE 

gance,  but  yet  I  fancy  that  must  have  been  the  notion 
at  the  back  of  my  mind ;  from  which  one  may  assume, 
I  think,  that  Constance  Grey  had  already  begun  to 
exercise  some  influence  over  me. 

With  the  seven  guineas  clinking  in  the  pockets  of 
my  evening  clothes  —  here,  at  all  events,  was  a  link 
with  University  days,  for  these  seldom-worn  garments 
bore  the  name  of  a  Cambridge  tailor  —  I  drove  to 
the  corner  of  the  road  beside  Battersea  Park  in  which 
the  Blaines  lived,  and  there  picked  up  Beatrice,  in 
all  her  vivid  finery,  by  appointment.  She  loved 
bright  colours  and  daring  devices  in  dress.  That  I 
should  come  in  a  cab  to  fetch  her  was  an  integral 
part  of  her  pleasure,  and,  if  funds  could  possibly  be 
stretched  to  permit  it,  she  liked  to  retain  the  services 
of  the  same  cab  until  I  brought  her  back  to  her  own 
door. 

We  drove  to  a  famous  showy  restaurant  close  to 
Piccadilly  Circus,  where  Beatrice  accomplished  the 
kind  of  entrance  which  delighted  her  heart,  with  at- 
tendants fluttering  about  her,  and  a  messenger  post- 
ing back  to  the  cab  for  a  forgotten  fan,  and  a  deal 
of  bustle  and  rustle  of  one  sort  and  another.  A  quar- 
ter of  an  hour  was  devoted  to  the  choice  of  a  menu 
in  a  dining-room  which  resembled  the  more  ornate 
type  of  music-hall,  and  was  of  about  the  same  size. 
The  flashing  garishness  of  it  all  delighted  Beatrice, 
and  the  heat  of  its  atmosphere  suited  both  her  mood 
and  her  extremely  decollete  toilette. 

I  remember  beginning  to  speak  of  my  previous  eve- 
ning's engagement  while  Beatrice  sipped  the  rather 
sticky  champagne,  which  was  the  first  item  of  the 


SATURDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

meal  to  reach  us.  But  a  certain  sense  of  unfitness  or 
disinclination  stopped  me  after  a  few  sentences,  and 
I  did  not  again  refer  to  my  new  friends ;  though  I 
had  been  thinking  a  good  deal  of  Constance  Grey 
and  her  plain-faced,  plain-spoken  aunt.  I  felt 
strangely  out  of  key  with  my  environment  in  that 
glaring  place,  and  the  strains  of  an  overloud  orches- 
tra, when  they  came  crashing  through  the  buzz  of 
talk  and  laughter,  and  the  clatter  of  glass  and  silver, 
were  rather  a  relief  to  me  as  a  substitute  for  conver- 
sation. I  drank  a  great  deal  of  champagne,  and  re- 
sented the  fact  that  it  seemed  to  have  no  stimulating 
effect  upon  me.  But  Beatrice  was  in  a  purring  stage 
of  contentment,  her  colour  high,  her  passionate  eyes 
sparkling,  and  low  laughter  ever  atremble  behind  her 
full,  red  lips. 

After  the  dinner  we  drove  to  another  place  exactly 
like  the  restaurant,  all  gilding  and  crimson  plush, 
and  there  watched  a  performance,  which  for  dulness 
and  banality  it  would  be  difficult  to  equal  anywhere. 
It  was  more  silly  than  a  peep-show  at  a  country  fair, 
but  it  was  all  set  in  a  most  gorgeous  and  costly  frame. 
The  man  who  did  crude  and  ancient  conjuring  tricks 
was  elaborately  finely  dressed,  and  attended  by  mon- 
strous footmen  in  liveries  of  Oriental  splendour. 
What  he  did  was  absurdly  tame;  the  things  he  did 
it  with,  his  accessories,  were  barbarously  gorgeous. 

This  was  not  one  of  the  great  "  Middle  Class 
Halls,"  as  they  were  called  during  their  first  year  of 
existence,  but  an  old-established  haunt  of  those  who 
aimed  at  "  seeing  life "  —  a  great  resort  of  am- 
bitious young  bloods  about  town.  Not  very  long 


THE    MESSAGE 

before  this  time,  a  powerful  trust  had  been  formed 
to  confer  the  stuffy  and  inane  delights  of  the  "  Hall  " 
upon  that  sturdily  respectable  suburban  middle  class 
—  the  backbone  of  London  society  —  which  had 
hitherto,  to  a  great  extent,  eschewed  this  particular 
form  of  dissipation.  The  trust  amassed  wealth  by 
striking  a  shrewd  blow  at  our  national  character.  Its 
entertainments  were  to  be  all  refinement  —  "  fun  with- 
out vulgarity  " ;  the  oily  announcements  were  nau- 
seating. But  they  answered  their  purpose  only  too 
well.  The  great  and  still  religious  bourgeois  class 
was  securely  hooked ;  and  then  the  name  of  "  Middle 
Class  Halls  "  was  dropped,  and  the  programme  pro- 
vided in  these  garish  palaces  became  simply  an  inex- 
pensive and  rather  amateurish  imitation  of  those  of 
the  older  halls,  plus  a  kind  of  prudish,  sentimental, 
and  even  quasi-religious  lubricity,  which  made  them 
altogether  revolting,  and  infinitely  deleterious. 

But  our  choice  upon  this  occasion  had  fallen  upon 
the  most  famous  of  the  old  halls.  Of  the  perform- 
ance I  remember  a  topical  song  which  evoked  enthu- 
siastic applause.  It  was  an  incredibly  stupid  piece 
of  doggerel  about  England's  position  in  the  world; 
and  the  shiny-faced  exquisite  who  declaimed  it 
strutted  to  and  fro  like  a  bantam  cock  at  each  fresh 
roar  of  applause  from  the  heated  house.  When  he 
used  the  word  "  fight  "  he  waved  an  imaginary  sword 
and  assumed  a  ridiculous  posture,  which  he  evidently 
connected  with  warlike  exercises  of  some  kind.  The 
song  praised  the  Government  —  "A  Government  er 
business  men ;  men  that's  got  sense  "  —  and  told  how 
this  wonderful  Government  had  stopped  the  pouring 

124 


SATURDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

out  of  poor  folks'  money  upon  flag-waving,  to  devote 
it  to  poor  folks'  needs.  It  alluded  to  the  title  that 
Administration  had  earned :  "  The  Destroyers  " ; 
and  acclaimed  it  a  proud  title,  because  it  meant  the 
destruction  of  "  gold-laced  bunkcombe,"  and  of 
"  vampires  that  were  preying  on  the  British  working 
man." 

But  the  chorus  was  the  thing,  and  the  perspiring 
singer  played  conductor  with  all  the  airs  and  graces 
of  a  spangled  showman  in  a  booth,  while  the  huge 
audience  yelled  itself  hoarse  over  this.  I  can  only 
recall  two  lines  of  it,  and  these  were  to  the  effect  that : 
"  They  "  —  meaning  the  other  Powers  of  civilization 
—  "  will  never  go  for  England,  because  England's 
got  the  dibs." 

It  was  rather  a  startling  spectacle ;  that  vast  audi- 
torium, in  which  one  saw  countless  flushed  faces,  tier 
on  tier,  gleaming  through  a  haze  of  tobacco  smoke; 
their  mouths  agape  as  they  roared  out  the  vapid  lines 
of  this  song.  I  remember  thinking  that  the  doggerel 
might  have  been  the  creation  of  my  fat  contributor 
from  Stettin,  Herr  Mitmann,  and  that  if  the  music- 
hall  public  had  reached  this  stage,  I  must  have  been 
oversensitive  in  my  somewhat  hostile  and  critical  atti- 
tude toward  the  writings  of  that  ponderous  Teuton. 
I  thought  that  for  once  The  Mass  would  almost  lag 
behind  its  readers ;  though  in  the  beginning  I  had 
regarded  Herr  Mitmann's  proposals  as  going  beyond 
even  our  limits. 

We  left  the  hall  while  its  roof  echoed  the  jingling 
tail-piece  of  another  popular  ditty,  which  tickled 
Beatrice's  fancy  hugely.  In  it  the  singer  expressed, 

125 


THE    MESSAGE 

without  exaggeration  and  without  flattery,  a  good 
deal  of  the  popular  London  attitude  toward  the  pur- 
suit of  pleasure  and  the  love  of  pleasure  resorts.  I 
recall  phrases  like :  "  Give  my  regards  to  Leicester 
Square  —  Greet  the  girls  in  Regent  Street  —  Tell 
them  in  Bond  Street  we'll  soon  meet  "  —  and,  "  Give 
them  my  love  in  the  Strand." 

The  atmosphere  reeked  now  of  spirits,  smoke,  and 
overheated  humanity.  The  voice  of  the  great  audi- 
ence was  hoarse  and  rather  bestial  in  suggestion. 
The  unescorted  women  began  to  make  their  invita- 
tions dreadfully  pressing.  Doubtless  my  mood  col- 
oured the  whole  tawdry  business,  but  I  remember 
finding  those  last  few  minutes  distinctly  revolting, 
and  experiencing  a  genuine  relief  when  we  stepped 
into  the  outer  air. 

But  the  lights  were  just  as  brilliant  outside,  the 
pavements  as  thronged  as  the  carpeted  promenade, 
its  faces  almost  as  thickly  painted  as  those  of  the 
lady  who  wished  her  "  regards  "  given  to  Leicester 
Square,  or  the  gentleman  who  had  assured  us  that 
nobody  wanted  to  fight  England,  because  England 
had  the  «  dibs." 

Beatrice  was  now  in  feverishly  high  spirits.  She 
no  longer  purred  contentment;  rather  it  seemed  to 
me  she  panted  in  avid  excitement,  while  pouring  out 
a  running  fire  of  comment  upon  the  dress  and  appear- 
ance of  passers-by,  as  we  drove  to  another  palace  of 
gilt  and  plush  —  a  sort  of  magnified  Pullman  car, 
with  decorations  that  made  one's  eyes  ache.  Here 
we  partook  of  quite  a  complicated  champagne  sup- 
per. I  dare  say  fifty  pounds  was  spent  in  that  room 

126 


SATURDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

after  the  gorgeously  uniformed  attendants  had  begun 
their  chant  of  "  Time,  gentlemen,  please ;  time ! " 
which  signified  that  the  closing  hour  had  arrived. 

Beatrice  kept  up  her  excitement  —  or  perhaps  the 
champagne  did  this  for  her  —  until  our  cab  was  half- 
way across  Chelsea  Bridge.  Then  she  lay  back  in  her 
corner,  and,  I  suppose,  began  to  feel  the  grayness  of 
the  as  yet  unseen  dawn  of  a  new  day.  But  as  I 
helped  her  out  of  the  cab  in  Battersea,  she  said  she 
had  thoroughly  enjoyed  her  "fluffy"  evening,  and 
thanked  me  very  prettily.  I  returned  in  the  cab  as 
far  as  Westminster,  and  there  dismissed  the  man  with 
the  last  of  my  seven  guineas,  having  decided  to  walk 
from  there  to  my  Bloomsbury  lodging. 

For  a  Socialist,  my  conduct  was  certainly  peculiar. 
There  were  two  of  us.  We  had  had  two  meals,  one 
of  which  was  as  totally  unnecessary  as  the  other  was 
overelaborate.  And  we  had  spent  an  hour  or  two  in 
watching  an  incredibly  stupid  and  vulgar  perform- 
ance. And  over  this  I  had  spent  a  sum  upon  which 
an  entire  family  could  have  been  kept  going  for  a 
couple  of  months.  But  there  were  scores  of  people 
in  London  that  night  —  some  of  them  passed  me  in 
cabs  and  carriages,  as  I  walked  from  the  Abbey 
toward  Fleet  Street  —  who  had  been  through  a  simi- 
lar programme  and  spent  twice  as  much  over  it  as 
I  had.  It  was  an  extraordinarily  extravagant  period ; 
and  it  seemed  that  the  less  folk  did  in  the  discharge 
of  their  national  obligations  as  citizens,  the  more 
they  demanded,  and  the  more  they  spent,  in  the  name 
of  pleasure. 

The  people  who  passed  me,  as  I  made  my  way  east- 
127 


THE    MESSAGE 

ward,  were  mostly  in  evening  dress,  pale  and  raffish- 
looking.  Many,  particularly  among  the  couples  in 
hansoms,  were  intoxicated,  and  making  a  painful 
muddle  of  such  melodies  as  those  we  had  listened  to 
at  the  music  hall.  Overeaten,  overdrunken,  over- 
excited, overextravagant,  in  all  ways  figures  of  in- 
continence, these  noisy  Londoners  made  their  way 
homeward,  pursued  by  the  advancing  gray  light  of 
a  Sabbath  dawn  in  midsummer. 

And  Beatrice  loved  everything  foreign,  because 
the  foreigners  had  none  of  our  stupid  British  Puri- 
tanism !  And  the  British  public  was  mightily  pleased 
with  its  Government,  "  The  Destroyers,"  because 
they  were  cutting  down  to  vanishing  point  expendi- 
ture upon  such  superfluous  vanities  as  national  de- 
fence, in  order  to  devote  the  money  to  improving 
the  conditions  in  which  the  public  lived,  and  to  the 
reducing  of  their  heavy  burdens  as  citizens  of  a  great 
Empire.  Money  could  not  possibly  be  spared  for 
such  ornamentation  as  ships  and  guns  and  bodies  of 
trained  men.  We  could  not  afford  it! 

As  I  passed  the  corner  of  Agar  Street  a  drunken 
cabdriver,  driving  two  noisily  intoxicated  men  in 
evening  dress,  brought  his  cab  into  collision  with  a 
gaunt,  wolf-eyed  man  who  had  been  scouring  the 
gutter  for  scraps  of  food.  He  was  one  of  an  army 
prowling  London's  gutters  at  that  moment:  human 
wolves,  questing  for  scraps  of  refuse  meat.  The 
space  between  each  prowler  was  no  more  than  a  few 
yards.  This  particular  wretch  was  knocked  down 
by  the  cab,  but  not  hurt.  Cabby  and  his  fares  roared 
out  drunken  laughter.  The  horse  was  never  checked. 

128 


But  in  the  midst  of  their  laughter  one  of  the  passen- 
gers threw  out  a  coin,  upon  which  the  human  wolf 
pounced  like  a  bird  of  prey.  I  saw  the  glint  of  the 
coin.  It  was  a  sovereign ;  very  likely  the  twentieth 
those  men  had  spent  that  night.  For  that  sum,  four 
hundred  of  the  gaunt,  gutter-prowling  wolves  might 
have  been  fed  and  sheltered. 

Entering  Holborn  I  ran  against  a  man  I  knew, 
named  Wardle,  one  of  the  sub-editors  of  a  Sunday 
newspaper,  then  on  his  way  home  from  Fleet  Street. 
Wardle  was  tired  and  sleepy,  but  stopped  to  ex- 
change a  few  words  of  journalistic  gossip. 

"  Rather  sickening  about  the  wind-up  of  the  East 
Anglian  Pageant,"  he  said,  "  isn't  it?  Did  you  hear 
of  it?" 

I  explained  that  I  had  not  been  in  Fleet  Street  that 
night,  and  had  heard  nothing. 

"  Why,  there  was  to  be  no  end  of  a  tumashi  for  the 
Saturday  evening  wind-up,  you  know,  and  we  were 
featuring  it.  We  sent  a  special  man  up  yesterday  to 
help  the  local  fellow.  Well,  just  as  we'd  got  in 
about  a  couple  of  hundred  words  of  his  introductory 
stuff,  word  came  through  that  the  wires  were  inter- 
rupted, and  not  another  blessed  line  did  we  get.  I 
tell  you  there  was  some  tall  cursing  done,  and  some 
flying  around  in  the  editorial  '  fill-up  '  drawers.  We 
were  giving  it  first  place  —  three  columns.  One 
blessing,  we  found  the  stoppage  was  general.  No 
one  else  has  got  a  line  of  East  Anglian  stuff  to-night. 
Ours  was  the  last  word  from  the  submerged  city  of 
Ipswich.  But  it  really  is  rather  an  odd  breakdown. 
No  sign  of  rough  weather ;  and,  mind  you  there  are 

129 


a  number  of  different  lines  of  communication.  But 
they're  all  blocked,  telegraph  and  telephone.  Our 
chief  tried  to  get  through  via  the  Continent,  just  to 
give  us  something  to  go  on.  But  it  was  no  go.  Odd, 
isn't  it?" 

"  Very,"  I  agreed,  as  we  turned ;  and  I  added, 
rather  inanely :  "  One  hears  a  lot  about  East  An- 
glian coast  erosion." 

Wardle  yawned  and  grinned. 

"  Yes,  to  be  sure.  Perhaps  East  Anglia  is  cruis- 
ing down  Channel  by  now.  Or  perhaps  the  Kaiser's 
landed  an  army  corps  and  taken  possession.  That 
Mediterranean  business  on  Tuesday  was  pretty  pro- 
nounced cheek,  you  know,  and,  by  all  accounts,  the 
result  of  direct  orders  from  Potsdam.  Only  the 
Kaiser's  bluff,  I  suppose,  but  I'm  told  it's  taken  most 
of  the  Channel  Fleet  down  into  Spanish  waters." 

I  smiled  at  the  activity  of  Wardle's  journalistic 
imagination,  and  thought  of  the  music-hall  crowd. 

"  Ah,  well,"  I  said,  "  « They'll  never  go  for  Eng- 
land, because  England's  got  the  dibs  ' !  " 

"  What  ho ! "  remarked  Wardle,  with  another 
yawn.  And  this  time  he  was  really  off. 

And  so  I  walked  home  alone  to  my  lodgings,  and 
climbed  into  bed,  thinking  vaguely  of  Constance 
Grey,  and  what  she  would  have  thought  of  my  night's 
work ;  this,  as  the  long,  palely  glinting  arms  of  the 
Sabbath  dawn  thrust  aside  the  mantle  of  summer 
night  from  Bloomsbury. 


130 


XIII 

THE    DEMONSTRATION    IN    HYDE    PARK 

Winds  of  the  World  give  answer  !  They  are  whimpering 
to  and  fro  — 

And  what  should  they  know  of  England  who  only  Eng- 
land know  ?  — 

The  poor  little  street-bred  people  that  vapour  and  fume 
and  brag, 

They  are  lifting  their  heads  in  the  stillness  to  yelp  at  the 
English  flag.  RDDYARD  KIPLING. 

AS  was  usually  the  case  on  the  day  following  one 
of  Beatrice's  "  fluffy  "  evenings,  I  descended 
to  my  never  very  tempting  lodging-house  breakfast 
on  that  Sunday  morning  feeling  the  reverse  of  cheer- 
ful, and  much  inclined  to  take  the  gloomiest  view  of 
everything  life  had  to  offer  me. 

Sunday  was  generally  a  melancholy  day  for  me. 
It  was  my  only  day  out  of  Fleet  Street,  and,  though 
I  had  long  since  taken  such  steps  as  I  thought  I 
could  afford  toward  transforming  my  bedroom  into 
a  sitting-room,  there  was  nothing  very  comfortable 
or  homelike  about  it.  I  had  dropped  the  habit  of 
churchgoing  after  the  first  few  months  of  my  Lon- 
don life,  without  any  particular  thought  or  intention, 
but  rather,  I  think,  as  one  kind  of  reflex  action  —  a 
subconscious  reflection  of  the  views  and  habits  of 
those  among  whom  I  lived  and  worked. 

131 


THE    MESSAGE 

Hearing  a  newsboy  crying  a  "  special "  edition  of 
some  paper,  I  threw  up  the  window  and  bought  a 
copy,  across  the  area  railings.  It  was  the  paper  for 
which  Wardle  worked.  I  found  in  it  no  particular 
justification  for  any  special  issue,  and,  as  a  fact,  the 
probability  is  the  appearance  of  this  edition  was 
merely  a  device  to  increase  circulation,  suggested 
mainly  by  the  fact  that  the  ordinary  issue  had  been 
delayed  by  the  East  Anglian  telegraphic  breakdown. 
Regarding  this,  I  found  the  following  item  of  edito- 
rial commentary: 

"  As  is  explained  elsewhere,  a  serious  breakdown 
of  telegraphic  communication  has  occurred  between 
London  and  Harwich,  Ipswich  and  East  Anglia  gen- 
erally, as  a  result  of  which  our  readers  are  robbed 
of  special  despatches  regarding  last  night's  conclu- 
sion of  the  East  Anglian  Pageant.  It  is  thought 
that  the  breakdown  is  due  to  some  electrical  disturb- 
ance of  the  atmosphere  resulting  in  a  fusion  of 
wires. 

"  But  as  an  example  of  the  ridiculous  lengths  to 
which  the  national  defence  cranks  will  go  in  their 
hatching  of  alarmist  reports,  a  rumour  was  actually 
spread  in  Fleet  Street  at  an  early  hour  this  morning 
that  this  commonplace  accident  to  the  telegraph  wires 
was  caused  by  an  invading  German  army.  This 
ridiculous  canard  is  reminiscent  of  some  of  the  foolish 
scares  which  frightened  our  forefathers  a  little  more 
than  a  century  ago,  when  the  Corsican  terrorized 
Europe.  But  our  rumour-mongers  are  too  far  out 
of  date  for  this  age.  It  is  unfortunate  that  the  ad- 
vocates of  militarism  should  receive  parliamentary 
132 


THE   DEMONSTRATION   IN   HYDE  PARK 

support  of  any  kind.  The  Opposition  is  weakly  and 
insignificant  enough  in  all  conscience,  without  court- 
ing further  unpopularity  by  floating  British  public 
feeling  in  this  way,  and  encouraging  the  cranks 
among  its  following  to  bring  ridicule  upon  the  coun- 

try- 

"  The  absurd  canard  to  which  we  have  referred  is 
maliciously  ill-timed.  It  will  doubtless  be  reported 
on  the  Continent,  and  may  injure  us  there.  But  we 
trust  our  friends  in  Germany  will  do  us  the  justice 
of  recognizing  at  once  that  this  is  merely  the  work 
of  an  irresponsible  and  totally  unrepresentative 
clique,  and  in  no  sort  a  reflection  of  any  aspect  of 
public  feeling  in  this  country.  We  are  able  to  state 
with  certainty  that  last  Tuesday's  regrettable  inci- 
dent in  the  Mediterranean  has  been  satisfactorily  and 
definitely  closed.  Admiral  Blennerhaustein  displayed 
characteristic  German  courtesy  and  generosity  in  his 
frank  acceptance  of  the  apology  sent  to  him  from 
Whitehall;  and  the  report  that  our  Channel  Fleet 
had  entered  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  is  incorrect.  A 
portion  of  the  Channel  Fleet  had  been  cruising  off 
the  coast  of  the  Peninsula,  and  is  now  on  its  way  back 
to  home  waters.  Our  relations  with  His  Imperial 
Majesty's  Government  in  Berlin  were  never  more 
harmonious,  and  such  a  canard  as  this  morning's 
rumour  of  invasion  is  only  worthy  of  mention  for  the 
sake  of  a  demonstration  of  its  complete  absurdity. 
If,  as  was  stated,  the  author  of  this  puerile  inven- 
tion is  a  Navy  League  supporter,  who  reached  Lon- 
don in  a  motor-car  from  Harwich  soon  after  daylight 
this  morning,  our  advice  to  him  is  to  devote  the  rest 

133 


THE    MESSAGE 

of  the  day  to  sleeping  off  the  effects  of  an  injudicious 
evening  in  East  Anglia." 

Failing  the  East  Anglian  Pageant,  the  paper's 
"  first  feature,"  I  noticed,  consisted  of  a  lot  of  gen- 
erously headed  particulars  regarding  the  big  Dis- 
armament Demonstration  to  be  held  in  Hyde  Park 
that  afternoon.  It  seemed  that  this  was  to  be  a 
really  big  thing,  and  I  decided  to  attend  in  the  inter- 
ests of  The  Mass.  The  President  of  the  Local  Gov- 
ernment Board  and  three  well-known  members  on  the 
Government  side  of  the  House  were  to  speak.  The 
Demonstration  had  been  organized  by  the  National 
Peace  Association  for  Disarmament  and  Social  Re- 
form, of  which  the  Prime  Minister  had  lately  been 
elected  President.  Delegates,  both  German  and  Eng- 
lish, of  the  Anglo-German  Union  had  promised  to 
deliver  addresses.  Among  other  well-known  bodies 
who  were  sending  representatives  I  saw  mention  of 
the  Anti-Imperial  and  Free  Tariff  Society,  the  Inde- 
pendent English  Guild,  the  Home  Rule  Association, 
the  Free  Trade  League,  and  various  Republican  and 
Socialist  bodies.  The  paper  said  some  amusement 
was  anticipated  from  a  suggested  counter  demonstra- 
tion proposed  by  a  few  Navy  League  enthusiasts; 
but  that  the  police  would  take  good  care  that  no 
serious  interruptions  were  allowed. 

As  the  Demonstration  was  fixed  for  three  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  I  decided  to  go  up  the  river  by 
steamboat  to  Kew  after  my  late  breakfast.  It  was  a 
gloriously  fine  morning,  and  on  the  river  I  began  to 
feel  a  little  more  cheerful.  As  we  passed  Battersea 
Park  I  thought  of  Beatrice,  who  always  suffered 


THE   DEMONSTRATION   IN  HYDE  PARK 

from  severe  depressions  after  her  little  outings.  Her 
spirits  were  affected;  in  my  case,  restaurant  food, 
inferior  wine,  and  the  breathing  of  vitiated  air  was 
paid  for  by  nothing  worse  than  a  headache  and  a 
morning's  discomfort. 

(One  of  the  curses  of  the  time,  which  seemed  to 
grow  more  acute  as  the  habit  of  extravagance  and 
the  thirst  for  pleasure  increased,  was  the  outrageous 
adulteration  of  all  food-stuffs,  and  more  particularly 
of  all  alcoholic  liquors,  which  prevailed  not  alone  in 
the  West  End  of  London,  but  in  every  city.  Home 
products  could  only  be  obtained  in  clubs  and  in  the 
houses  of  the  rich.  Their  quantity  was  insufficient 
to  admit  of  their  reaching  the  open  markets.  In  the 
cities  we  lived  entirely  upon  foreign  products,  and 
their  adulteration  had  reached  a  most  amazing  limit 
of  badness.) 

My  thought  of  Beatrice  was  brief  that  morning, 
but  I  continued  during  most  of  my  little  excursion 
to  dwell  upon  my  new  friends  in  South  Kensington. 
I  wondered  how  Constance  Grey  spent  Sunday  in 
London,  and  whether  the  confinement  of  the  town 
oppressed  her  after  the  spacious  freedom  of  the 
South  African  life  she  had  described  to  me.  I  re- 
membered that  I  had  promised  to  call  upon  her  and 
her  aunt  very  soon,  and  wandered  whether  that  after- 
noon, after  the  Demonstration,  would  be  too  soon. 
I  mentally  decided  that  it  would,  but  that  I  would 
go  all  the  same. 

And  then,  suddenly,  as  the  steamer  passed  under 
Hammersmith  Bridge,  a  thought  went  through  me 
like  cold  steel: 

135 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  She  will  very  soon  return  to  that  freer,  wider 
life  out  there  in  South  Africa." 

How  I  hated  the  place.  South  Africa !  I  had 
always  associated  it  with  Imperialism,  militarism  — 
"  empireism,"  as  I  called  it  in  my  own  mind :  the 
strange,  outside  interests,  which  one  regarded  as 
opposing  home  interests,  social  reform,  and  the  like. 
Though  I  did  not  know  that  any  political  party  con- 
siderations influenced  me  one  atom,  I  was  in  reality, 
like  nearly  every  one  else  at  that  time,  mentally  the 
slave  and  creature  of  party  feeling,  party  tradition, 
party  prejudice.  But  now  I  had  a  new  cause  for 
hating  those  remote  uplands  of  Empire,  those  out- 
side places. 

Sitting  under  a  tree  in  Kew  Gardens,  I  had  leisure 
in  which  to  browse  over  the  matter,  and,  upon  reflec- 
tion, I  was  astonished  that  this  sudden  thought  of 
mine  should  have  struck  so  shrewdly,  so  violently, 
into  my  peace  of  mind.  I  tried  to  neutralize  its  effect 
by  reminding  myself  that  I  had  met  Constance  Grey 
only  twice;  that  she  was  in  many  ways  outside  my 
purview;  that  she  was  the  intimate  friend  of  people 
who  had  helped  to  make  history,  the  special  contrib- 
utor to  the  Times,  with  her  introductions  to  ex-Cab- 
inet Ministers  in  England  and  her  other  relations 
with  great  people;  that  such  a  woman  could  never 
play  an  intimate  part  in  my  life.  Her  friendliness 
could  not  be  the  prelude  to  friendship  with  the  assist- 
ant editor  of  The  Mass;  it  probably  meant  no  more 
than  a  courteous  deference  to  John  Crondall's  whim, 
I  told  myself.  But  I  would  call  at  the  South  Ken- 
sington flat,  certainly ;  it  would  be  boorish  to  refrain, 

136 


THE   DEMONSTRATION   IN  HYDE  PARK 

and  —  there  was  no  denying  I  should  have  been 
mightily  perturbed  if  any  valid  reason  had  appeared 
against  my  going  to  see  Constance  Grey  after  doing 
my  duty  by  the  Demonstration. 

The  newsboys  were  putting  a  good  deal  of  feel- 
ing into  their  crying  of  special  editions  when  I 
reached  the  streets  again ;  but  I  was  not  inclined 
to  waste  further  pence  upon  the  Sunday  News'  mor- 
alizings  over  the  evolution  of  canards.  I  took  a  mess 
of  some  adulterated  pottage  at  a  foreign  restaurant 
in  Netting  Hill,  as  I  had  no  wish  to  return  to  Blooms- 
bury  before  the  Demonstration.  The  waiter  —  either 
a  Swiss  or  a  German  —  asked  me: 

"  Vad  you  sink,  sare,  of  ze  news  from  ze  coun- 
try?" 

I  asked  him  what  it  was,  and  he  handed  me  a  fresh 
copy  of  the  Sunday  News,  headed :  "  Special  Edi- 
tion. Noon." 

"  By  Jove !  "  I  thought ;  "  no  Sunday  dinner  for 
Wardle!  They  couldn't  have  printed  this  in  the 
small  hours." 

But  the  only  new  matter  in  this  issue  was  a  short 
announcement,  headed  in  poster  type,  as  follows: 

"EAST  ANGLIA'S  ISOLATION 

RAILWAY  COMMUNICATION  STOPPED 

STRANGE  SUPPORT  OF  INVASION  CANARD 

IS  THIS  A  TORY  HOAX? 

(SPECIAL) 

The  preposterous  rumour  of  a  German  invasion  of 
England  is  receiving  mysterious  support.  We  hear 
from  a  reliable  source  that  some  Imperialist  and  Navy 

137 


THE    MESSAGE 

League  cranks  have  organized  a  gigantic  hoax  by 
way  of  opposition  to  the  Disarmament  Demonstra- 
tion. If  the  curious  breakdown  of  communication 
with  the  east  coast  does  prove  to  be  the  work  of 
political  fanatics,  we  think,  and  hope,  that  these 
gentry  may  shortly  be  convinced,  in  a  manner  they 
are  never  likely  to  forget,  that,  even  in  this  land  of 
liberty,  the  crank  is  not  allowed  to  interfere  with  the 
transaction  of  public  business. 

"  No  trains  have  reached  Liverpool  Street  from  the 
northeast  this  morning,  and  communication  cannot 
be  established  beyond  Chelmsford.  Whatever  the 
cause  of  this  singular  breakdown  may  be,  our  read- 
ers will  soon  know  it,  for,  in  order  finally  to  dispel 
any  hint  of  credence  which  may  be  attached  in  some 
quarters  to  the  absurd  invasion  report,  we  have  al- 
ready despatched  two  representatives  in  two  powerful 
motor-cars,  northeastward  from  Brentwood,  with  in- 
structions to  return  to  that  point  and  telegraph  full 
particulars  directly  they  can  discover  the  cause  of 
the  stoppage  of  communication. 

"  Further  special  editions  will  be  issued  when  news 
is  received  from  East  Anglia." 

"  Yes,"  I  said  to  the  waiter ;  "  it's  a  curious  af- 
fair." 

"  You  believe  him,  sare  —  zat  Shermany  do  it?  " 

"Eh?     No;   certainly  not.     Do  you?  " 

"  Me  ?  Oh,  sare,  I  don'  know  nozzing.  Vaire 
shstrong,  sare,  ze  Sherman  Armay." 

The  fellow's  face  annoyed  me  in  some  way.  It, 
and  his  grins  and  gesticulations,  had  a  sinister  seem- 
ing. My  trade  brought  me  into  contact  with  so 

138 


THE   DEMONSTRATION   IN  HYDE   PARK 

many  low-class  aliens.  I  told  myself  I  was  getting 
insular  and  prejudiced,  and  resumed  my  meal  with 
more  thought  for  myself  and  my  tendencies  and  af- 
fairs than  for  the  East  Anglian  business.  I  have 
wondered  since  what  the  waiter  thought  about  while 
I  ate;  whether  he  thought  of  England,  Germany, 
and  of  myself,  as  representing  the  British  citizen. 
But,  to  be  sure,  for  aught  I  know,  his  thoughts  may 
have  been  ordered  for  him  from  Berlin. 

The  Demonstration  drew  an  enormous  concourse 
of  people  to  Hyde  Park.  The  weather  being  perfect, 
a  number  of  people  made  an  outing  of  the  occasion, 
and  one  saw  whole  groups  of  people  who  clearly 
came  from  beyond  Whitechapel,  the  Borough,  Shep- 
herd's Bush,  and  Islington.  As  had  been  anticipated, 
a  few  well-dressed  people  endeavoured  to  run  a  coun- 
ter-demonstration under  a  Navy  League  banner ;  but 
their  following  was  absurdly  small,  and  the  crowd 
gave  them  nothing  but  ridicule  and  contempt. 

The  President  of  the  Local  Government  Board 
received  a  tremendous  ovation.  For  some  minutes 
after  his  first  appearance  that  enormous  crowd  sang, 
"  He's  a  jolly  good  fellow!  "  with  great  enthusiasm. 
Then,  when  this  member  of  the  Government  at  last 
succeeded  in  getting  as  far  as :  "  Mr.  Chairman, 
ladies  and  gentlemen,"  some  one  started  the  song 
with  the  chorus  containing  the  words :  "  They'll 
never  go  for  England,  because  England's  got  the 
dibs."  This  spread  like  a  line  of  fire  in  dry  grass, 
and  in  a  moment  the  vast  crowd  was  rocking  to  the 
jingling  rhythm  of  the  song,  the  summer  air  quiver- 
ing to  the  volume  of  its  thousand-throated  voice. 

139 


THE    MESSAGE 

The  President  of  the  Local  Government  Board  had 
been  rather  suspected  of  tuft-hunting  recently,  and 
his  appearance  in  the  stump  orator's  role,  and  in  the 
cause  of  disarmament,  was  wonderfully  popular.  In 
his  long  career  as  Labour  agitator,  Socialist,  and 
Radical,  he  had  learned  to  know  the  popular  pulse 
remarkably  well;  and  now  he  responded  cleverly  to 
the  call  of  the  moment.  His  vein  was  that  of  the 
heavy,  broad  bludgeoning  sarcasm  which  tickles  a 
crowd,  and  his  theme  was  not  the  wickedness,  but  the 
stupidity  and  futility  of  all  "  Jingoism,"  "  spread- 
eagleism,"  "  tall-talk,"  and  "  gold-lace  bunk- 
combe." 

"  I  am  told  my  honourable  friends  of  the  opposi- 
tion," he  said,  with  an  ironical  bow  in  the  direction  of 
the  now  folded  Navy  League  banner,  "  have  played 
some  kind  of  a  practical  joke  in  the  eastern  coun- 
ties to-day.  Well,  children  will  be  children;  but  I 
am  afraid  there  will  have  to  be  spankings  if  half  that 
I  hear  is  true.  They  have  tried  to  frighten  you  into 
abandoning  this  Demonstration  with  a  pretended  in- 
vasion of  England.  Well,  my  friends,  it  does  not 
look  to  me  as  though  their  invasion  had  affected  this 
Demonstration  very  seriously.  I  seem  to  fancy  I  see 
quite  a  number  of  people  gathered  together  here. 
(It  is  estimated  that  over  sixty  thousand  people  were 
trying  to  hear  his  words.)  But  all  I  have  to  say  on 
this  invasion  question  is  just  this:  If  our  friends 
from  Germany  have  invaded  East  Anglia,  let  us  be 
grateful  for  their  enterprise,  and,  as  a  nation  of 
shopkeepers  should,  let  us  make  as  much  as  we  can 
out  of  'em.  But  don't  let  us  forget  our  hospitality. 

140 


THE   DEMONSTRATION   IN  HYDE  PARK 

If  our  neighbours  have  dropped  in  in  a  friendly  way, 
why,  let's  be  sure  we've  something  hot  for  supper. 
Perhaps  a  few  sausages  wouldn't  be  taken  amiss. 
(The  laughter  and  applause  was  so  continuous  here 
that  for  some  moments  nothing  further  could  be 
heard.)  No,  my  friends,  this  invasion  hoax  should 
now  be  placed  finally  upon  the  retired  list.  It  has 
been  on  active  service  now  since  the  year  1800,  and 
I  really  think  it's  time  our  spread-eagle  friends  gave 
us  a  change.  Let  me  for  one  moment  address  you  in 
my  official  capacity,  as  your  servant  and  a  member 
of  the  Government.  This  England  of  ours  is  about 
as  much  in  danger  of  being  invaded  as  I  am  of  be- 
coming a  millionaire,  and  those  of  you " 

The  speaker's  next  words  never  reached  me,  being 
drowned  by  a  great  roar  of  laughter  and  applause. 
Just  then  I  turned  round  to  remonstrate  with  a  man 
who  was  supporting  himself  upon  my  right  shoulder. 
I  was  on  the  edge  of  the  one  narrow  part  of  the 
crowd,  against  some  iron  railings.  As  I  turned  I 
noticed  a  number  of  boys  tearing  along  in  fan-shaped 
formation,  and  racing  toward  the  crowd  from  the 
direction  of  Marble  Arch.  My  eyes  followed  the 
approaching  boys,  and  I  forgot  the  fellow  who  had 
been  plaguing  me.  The  lads  were  all  carrying  bun- 
dles of  papers,  and  now,  as  they  drew  nearer,  I  could 
see  and  hear  that  they  were  yelling  as  they  ran. 

"  Another  special  edition,"  I  thought.  "  No  sort 
of  a  Sunday  for  poor  Wardle." 

The  President  of  the  Local  Government  Board  had 
resumed  his  speech,  and  I  could  hear  his  clean-cut 
words  distinctly.  He  had  a  good  incisive  delivery. 

141 


THE    MESSAGE 

Across  his  words  now  the  hoarse  yell  of  an  approach- 
ing newsboy  smote  upon  my  ears : 

"  Extry  speshul !  Sixpence !  German  Army  Corps 
in  England!  Speshul!  Invashen  er  Sufferk!  Spe- 
shul —  sixpence !  German  Army  Corps  —  sixpence ! 
Invashen ! " 

"  By  Jove !  "  I  thought.  "  That's  rough  on  our 
disarmament  feature  from  Herr  Mitmann ! " 

I  very  well  remember  that  that  precisely  was  my 
thought. 


142 


XIV 

THE    NEWS 

He  could  not  hear  Death's  rattle  at  the  door, 
He  was  so  busy  with  his  sottishness.  —  TURNER. 

THE  chance  of  my  position  on  the  edge  of  the 
crowd  nearest  to  Marble  Arch  caused  me  to  be 
among  those  who  secured  a  paper,  and  at  the  compar- 
atively modest  price  of  sixpence.  Two  minutes  later, 
I  saw  a  member  of  the  committee  of  the  Demonstra- 
tion hand  over  half-a-crown  for  one  of  the  same 
limp  sheets,  all  warm  and  smeary  from  the  press. 
And  in  two  more  minutes  the  newsboys  (there  must 
have  been  fifty  of  them)  were  racing  back  to  Marble 
Arch,  feverishly  questing  further  supplies,  and,  I 
suppose,  reckoning  as  they  ran  their  unaccustomed 
gains. 

The  news,  mostly  in  poster  type,  was  only  a  matter 
of  a  few  lines  of  comment,  and  a  few  more  lines  of 
telegraphic  despatch  from  Brentwood: 

"  Telegraphic  communication  with  Chelmsford  has 
now  been  cut  off,  but  one  of  our  special  representa- 
tives, who  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  powerful  six- 
cylinder  motor-car,  has  reached  Brentwood,  after  a 
racing  tour  to  the  northeastward.  We  publish  his 
despatch  under  all  possible  reserve.  He  is  a  journal- 
ist of  high  repute,  but  we  venture  to  say  with  confi- 

143 


THE    MESSAGE 

dence  that  he  has  evidently  been  imposed  upon  by  the 
promoters  of  the  most  abominably  wicked  hoax  and 
fraud  ever  perpetrated  by  criminal  fanatics  upon  a 
trusting  public.  We  have  very  little  doubt  that  a 
number  of  these  rabid  advocates  of  that  spirit  of 
militarism  to  which  the  British  public  will  never  for 
one  moment  submit,  will  be  cooling  their  heated  brains 
in  prison  cells  before  the  night  is  out." 

And  then  followed  the  despatch  from  Brentwood, 
which  said: 

"  Roads,  railways,  communication  of  all  kinds  ab- 
solutely blocked.  Coastal  regions  of  Suffolk  and 
South  Norfolk,  and  possibly  Essex,  are  occupied  by 
German  soldiers.  A  cyclist  from  near  Harwich  says 
the  landing  was  effected  last  evening,  the  most  elab- 
orate preparations  and  arrangements  having  been 
made  beforehand.  My  car  was  fired  at  near  Colches- 
ter. Chelmsford  is  now  occupied  by  German  cavalry, 
cyclist  and  motor  corps.  Have  not  heard  of  any  loss 
of  life,  but  whole  country  is  panic-stricken.  Cannot 
send  further  news.  Telegraph  office  closed  to  public, 
being  occupied  in  official  business." 

That  was  all.  As  my  eyes  rose  from  the  blurred 
surface  of  the  news-sheet  the  picture  of  the  crowd 
absorbed  me,  like  a  stage-spectacle.  There  were  from 
forty  to  sixty  thousand  people  assembled,  of  all  ages 
and  classes.  Among  them  were  perhaps  one  thou- 
sand, perhaps  two  thousand,  copies  of  the  newspaper. 
Some  ten  thousand  people  were  craning  necks  and 
straining  eyes  to  read  those  papers.  The  rest  were 
making  short,  hoarse,  frequently  meaningless  ejacu- 
lations. 

144 


THE    NEWS 

I  saw  one  middle-aged  man,  who  might  have  been 
a  grocer,  and  a  deacon  in  his  place  of  worship,  fold 
up  his  paper  after  reading  it  and  thrust  it,  for  future 
reference,  in  the  tail-pocket  of  his  sombre  Sunday 
coat.  But  his  neighbours  in  the  crowd  would  not 
have  that.  A  number  of  outstretched  hands  sud- 
denly surrounded  him.  I  saw  his  face  pale.  "Give 
us  a  look !  "  was  all  the  sense  I  grasped  from  a  score 
of  exclamations.  The  grocer's  paper  was  in  frag- 
ments on  the  grass  ten  seconds  later,  and  its  destroy- 
ers were  reaching  out  in  other  directions. 

"  It's  abominable,"  I  heard  the  grocer  muttering 
to  himself;  and  his  hands  shook  as  though  he  had 
the  palsy. 

But  in  other  cases  the  papers  passed  whole  from 
hand  to  hand,  and  their  holders  read  the  news  aloud. 
I  think  the  entire  crowd  had  grasped  the  gist  of  it 
inside  of  four  minutes ;  and  their  exclamatory  com- 
ments were  extraordinary,  grotesque. 

"  My  God !  "  and  "  My  Gawd !  "  reached  my  ears 
frequently.  But  they  were  less  representative  than 
were  short,  sharp  bursts  of  laughter,  harsh  and  stac- 
cato, like  a  dog's  bark,  and,  it  may  be,  half-hyster- 
ical. And,  piercing  these  snaps  of  laughter,  one 
heard  the  curious,  contradictory  yapping  of  such 
sentences  as  :  "I  sye ;  'ow  about  them  'ot  sossiges  ?  " 
"'Taint  true,  Bill,  is  it?"  "Disgraceful  business; 
perfectly  disgraceful!"  "Wot  price  the  Kaiser? 
Not  arf ! "  "  Anything  to  sell  the  papers,  you 
know!"  "What?  No.  Jolly  lot  of  rot!" 
"  Johnny  get  yer  gun,  get  yer  gun !  "  "  Some  one 
must  be  punished  for  this.  Might  have  caused  a 

145 


THE    MESSAGE 

panic,  you  know."  "  True  ?  Good  Lord,  no !  What 
would  our  Navy  be  doing?  "  "  Well,  upon  my  word, 
I  don't  know."  "  Nice  business  for  the  fish  trade !  " 
"  Well,  if  that's  it,  I  shall  take  the  children  down  to 
their  Aunt  Rebecca's."  "  Wot  price  Piccadilly  an' 
Regent  Street  to-night  ?  "  "  Come  along,  my  dear ; 
let's  get  home  out  of  this."  "  Absolute  bosh,  my  dear 
boy,  from  beginning  to  end  —  doing  business  with 
'em  every  day  o'  my  life !  "  And  then  a  hoarse  snatch 
of  song :  "  '  They'll  never  go  for  England  '  —  not 
they !  What  ho !  '  Because  England's  got  the 
dibs!'" 

Suddenly  then,  above  and  across  the  thousand- 
voiced  small  talk,  came  the  trained  notes  of  the  voice 
of  the  President  of  the  Local  Government  Board. 

"  My  friends,  the  whole  story  is  a  most  transpar- 
ent fraud.  It's  a  shameful  hoax.  I  tell  you  the  thing 
is  physically  and  morally  impossible.  It  couldn't 
have  been  done  in  the  time ;  and  it  is  all  a  lie,  anyhow. 
I  beg  to  propose  a  hearty  vote  of  thanks  to  our 
chairman  for " 

The  crowd  had  listened  attentively  enough  to  the 
old  agitator's  comment  on  the  news.  They  liked  his 
assurances  on  that  point.  But  they  were  in  no  mood 
for  ceremonial.  Thousands  were  already  straggling 
across  the  grass  toward  Marble  Arch  and  down  to 
Hyde  Park  Corner.  The  speaker's  further  words 
were  drowned  in  a  confused  hubbub  of  applause, 
cheers,  laughter,  shouts  of  "  Are  we  downhearted  ?  " 
raucous  answers  in  the  negative,  and  cries  of  "  Never 
mind  the  chairman!"  and  "He's  a  jolly  good 
fellow!" 

146 


THE    NEWS 

In  ten  minutes  that  part  of  the  park  seemed  to 
have  been  stripped  naked,  and  the  few  vehicles,  tables, 
and  little  platforms  which  had  formed  the  centre  of 
the  Demonstration  appeared,  like  the  limbs  of  a  tree 
suddenly  bereft  of  foliage,  looking  curiously  small 
and  bare.  I  am  told  that  restaurants  and  refresh- 
ment places  did  an  enormous  trade  during  the  next 
few  hours.  When  the  public-houses  opened  they 
were  besieged,  and,  in  many  cases,  closed  again  after 
a  few  hours,  sold  out. 

For  my  part,  I  made  at  once,  and  without  think- 
ing, for  Constance  Grey's  flat  in  South  Kensington. 
The  crowds  in  the  streets  were  not  only  much  larger, 
but  in  many  ways  different  from  the  usual  run  of 
Sunday  crowds.  The  people  wore  their  Sunday 
clothes,  but  they  had  doffed  the  Sunday  manners  and 
air.  There  was  more  of  a  suggestion  of  Saturday 
night  in  the  streets ;  the  suggestion  that  a  tremen- 
dous number  of  people  were  going  to  enjoy  a 
"  spree  "  of  some  kind.  A  kind  of  noisy  hilarity,  com- 
bined with  a  general  desire  for  cigars,  drinks,  sing- 
ing, and  gaiety,  seemed  to  be  ruling  the  people. 

At  the  upper  end  of  Sloane  Street  a  German  band 
was  blaring  out  the  air  of  "  The  Holy  City,"  and 
people  stood  about  in  groups  laughing  and  chatting 
noisily.  The  newspaper  boys  had  some  competitors 
now,  and  the  Bank  Holiday  flavour  of  the  streets  was 
added  to  by  a  number  of  lads  and  girls  who  had  ap- 
peared from  nowhere,  with  all  sorts  of  valueless  com- 
modities for  sale,  such  as  peacocks'  feathers,  paper 
fans,  and  streamers  of  coloured  paper. 

Why  these  things  should  have  been  wanted  I  can- 
147 


THE    MESSAGE 

not  say;  but  their  sellers  knew  their  business  very 
well.  The  demand  was  remarkably  brisk.  Indeed, 
I  noticed  one  of  three  young  men,  who  walked 
abreast,  purchase  quite  a  bunch  of  the  long  feathers, 
only  to  drop  them  beside  the  curb  a  few  moments 
later,  whence  another  vendor  promptly  plucked  them, 
and  sold  them  again.  I  suppose  that  by  this  time 
the  vast  majority  of  the  people  had  no  doubt  what- 
ever about  the  news  being  a  monstrous  hoax ;  but 
there  was  no  blinking  the  fact  that  the  public  had 
been  strongly  moved. 

It  was  with  a  distinct  sense  of  relief  that  I  learned 
from  a  servant  that  Miss  Grey  was  at  home  —  had 
just  come  in,  as  a  matter  of  fact.  It  was  as  though 
I  had  some  important  business  to  transact  with  this 
girl  from  South  Africa,  with  her  brilliant  dark  eyes, 
and  alert,  thoughtful  expression.  I  felt  that  it  would 
have  been  serious  if  she  should  have  been  away,  if  I 
had  missed  her.  It  was  not  until  I  heard  her  step 
outside  the  door  of  the  little  drawing-room  into 
which  I  had  been  shown,  that  I  suddenly  became  con- 
scious that  I  had  no  business  whatever  with  Constance 
Grey,  and  that  this  call,  on  Sunday,  within  forty- 
eight  hours  of  my  dining  there,  might  perhaps  be 
adjudged  a  piece  of  questionable  taste. 

A  minute  later,  and,  if  I  had  thought  again  of  the 
matter  at  all,  I  should  have  known  that  Constance 
Grey  wasted  no  time  over  any  such  petty  considera- 
tions. She  entered  to  me  with  a  set,  grave  face,  tak- 
ing my  hand  mechanically,  as  though  too  much  pre- 
.  occupied  for  such  ceremonies. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  news  ?  "  she  said,  with- 
148 


THE    NEWS 

out  a  word  of  preliminary  greeting.  I  felt  more 
than  a  little  abashed  at  this;  for,  truth  to  tell,  I 
really  had  given  no  serious  thought  to  the  news.  I 
had  observed  its  reception  by  the  public  as  a  specta- 
tor might.  But,  in  the  first  place,  I  had  been  early 
warned  that  it  was  all  a  hoax ;  and  then,  too,  like  so 
many  of  my  contemporaries,  I  was  without  the  citi- 
zen feeling  altogether,  so  far  as  national  interests 
were  concerned.  I  had  grown  to  regard  citizenship 
as  exclusively  a  matter  of  domestic  politics  and  social 
progress,  municipal  affairs,  and  the  like.  I  never 
gave  any  thought  to  our  position  as  a  people  and  a 
nation  in  relation  to  foreign  Powers. 

"  Oh,  well,"  I  said,  "  it's  an  extraordinary  busi- 
ness, isn't  it?  I  have  just  come  from  the  Demon- 
stration in  Hyde  Park.  It  was  practically  squashed 
by  the  arrival  of  the  special  editions.  The  people 
seemed  pretty  considerably  muddled  about  it,  so  I 
suppose  those  who  arranged  it  all  may  be  said  to 
have  scored  their  point." 

"  So  you  don't  believe  it?  " 

"  Well,  I  believe  it  is  generally  admitted  to  be  a 
gigantic  hoax,  is  it  not?  " 

"  But,  my  dear  Mr.  Mordan,  how  —  how  wonder- 
ful English  people  are!  You,  your  own  self;  what 
do  you  think  about  it?  But  forgive  me  for  heckling. 
Won't  you  sit  down?  Or  will  you  come  into  the 
study?  Aunt  is  in  there." 

We  went  into  the  study,  a  cheerful,  bright  room, 
with  low  wicker  chairs,  and  a  big,  littered  writing- 
table. 


149 


THE   MESSAGE 

"  Mr.  Mordan  doesn't  believe  it,"  said  Constance 
Grey,  when  I  had  shaken  hands  with  her  aunt. 

"  Doesn't  he? "  said  that  strong,  plain-spoken 
woman.  "  Well,  I  fancy  there  are  a  good  many 
more  by  the  same  way  of  thinking,  who'll  have  their 
eyes  opened  pretty  widely  by  this  time  to-morrow." 

"  Then  you  take  the  whole  thing  seriously  ?  "  I 
asked  them. 

Somehow,  my  own  thoughts  had  become  active  in 
the  presence  of  these  women,  and  were  racing  over 
everything  that  I  had  seen  and  heard  that  day,  from 
the  moment  of  my  chat  with  Wardle,  before  sunrise, 
in  Holborn. 

"  I  don't  see  any  other  way  to  take  it,"  said  Mrs. 
Van  Homrey,  with  laconic  emphasis.  "Do  you?" 
she  added. 

"  Well,  you  see,  I  did  not  begin  by  taking  your 
view.  My  first  word  of  it  was  just  before  dawn  this 
morning,  from  a  newspaper  man  in  Holborn;  and, 
somehow  —  well,  you  know,  the  general  idea  seems 
to  be  that  the  whole  thing  is  an  elaborate  joke  worked 
up  by  the  Navy  League,  or  somebody,  as  a  counter- 
stroke  to  the  Disarmament  Demonstration  —  to  teach 
us  a  lesson,  and  all  that,  you  know." 

I  had  to  remind  myself  that  I  was  addressing  two 
ladies  who  were  sure  to  be  whole-hearted  supporters 
of  the  Navy  League  and  all  other  Imperialist  organi- 
zations. Constance  Grey  seemed  to  me  to  be  apprais- 
ing me.  I  fancied  those  brilliant  eyes  of  hers  were 
looking  right  into  me  with  grave  criticism,  and  dis- 
covering me  unworthy.  My  heart  sickened  at  the 
thought.  I  should  have  been  more  distressed  had  not 

150 


THE   NEWS 

a  vague,  futile  anger  crept  into  my  mind.  After  all, 
I  thought,  what  right  had  this  girl  from  South 
Africa  to  criticize  me?  I  was  a  man.  I  knew  Eng- 
land better  than  she  did.  I  was  a  journalist  of  expe- 
rience. Bah!  My  twopenny  thoughts  drooped  and 
fainted  as  they  rose. 

"  But  perhaps  you  are  better  informed?  "  I  said, 
weakly.  "  Perhaps  you  have  other  information?  " 

Constance  Grey  looked  straight  at  me,  and  as  I 
recall  her  gaze  now,  it  was  almost  maternal  in  its 
yearning  gravity. 

"  I  think  it's  going  to  be  a  lesson  all  right,"  she 
said.  "  What  cuts  me  to  the  heart  is  the  fear  that 
it  may  have  come  too  late." 

Never  have  I  heard  such  gravity  in  a  young 
woman's  voice.  Her  words  overpowered  me  almost 
by  the  weight  of  prescient  meaning  she  gave  them. 
They  reached  me  as  from  some  solemn  sanctuary,  a 
fount  of  inspiration. 

"  We  haven't  any  special  information,"  said  Mrs. 
Van  Homrey.  "  We  have  only  read,  like  every  one 
else,  that  East  Anglia  is  occupied  by  German  sol- 
diers, landed  last  night;  that  the  East  Anglian 
Pageant  has  been  made  the  cloak  of  most  elaborate 
preparations  for  weeks  past ;  that  the  Mediterranean 
incident  last  week  was  a  deliberate  scheme  to  draw 
the  Channel  Fleet  south;  and  that  the  whole  dread- 
ful business  has  succeeded  so  far,  like  —  like  perfect 
machinery ;  like  the  thing  it  is :  the  outcome  of  per- 
fect discipline  and  long,  deliberate  planning.  We 
have  heard  no  more;  but  the  only  hoaxing  that  I 
can  see  is  done  by  the  purblind  people  who  have 

151 


THE    MESSAGE 

made  the  public  think  it  a  hoax  —  and  that  is  not 
conscious  hoaxing,  of  course;  they  are  too  bemud- 
dled  with  their  disarmament  farce  for  that." 

"  More  tragedy  than  farce,  aunt,  I'm  afraid," 
said  Constance  Grey.  And  then,  turning  to  me,  she 
said :  "  We  lunched  at  General  Penn  Dicksee's  to- 
day ;  and  they  have  no  doubt  about  the  truth  of  the 
news.  The  General  has  motored  down  to  Aldershot. 
They  will  begin  some  attempt  at  mobilizing  at  once, 
I  believe.  But  it  seemed  impossible  to  get  into  touch 
with  headquarters.  All  the  War  Office  people  are 
away  for  the  week-end.  In  fact,  they  say  the  Min- 
ister's in  Ipswich,  and  can't  get  away.  General  Penn 
Dicksee  says  they  have  practically  no  material  to 
work  with  for  any  immediate  mobilization  purposes. 
He  says  that  under  the  present  system  nothing  can  be 
done  in  less  than  a  week.  He  thinks  the  most  useful 
force  will  be  the  sailors  from  the  Naval  Barracks. 
But  I  should  suppose  they  would  be  wanted  for  the 
ships  —  if  we  have  any  ships  left  fit  for  sea.  The 
General  thinks  there  may  be  a  hundred  thousand 
German  soldiers  within  twenty  or  thirty  miles  of 
London  by  to-morrow." 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Van  Homrey,  "  it  doesn't  seem 
easy  to  take  it  any  other  way  than  seriously;  not  if 
one's  on  the  British  side.  And,  for  the  matter  of 
that,  if  I  know  the  Teuton,  they  are  taking  it  pretty 
seriously  in  East  Anglia,  and  —  and  in  Berlin." 

And  up  till  now,  I  had  been  thinking  of  the  extra 
Sunday  work  for  Wardle,  and  the  way  they  had 
started  selling  peacocks'  feathers  and  things,  in  the 
streets ! 

152 


XV 

SUNDAY    NIGHT    IN    LONDON 


"Ah,"  they  cry,  "Destiny, 
Prolong  the  present ! 
Time,  stand  still  here! " 

The  prompt  stern  Goddess 

Shakes  her  head,  frowning; 

Time  gives  his  hour-glass 

Its  due  reversal ; 

Their  hour  is  gone.  —  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

I  STAYED  to  dinner  at  the  flat  in  South  Ken- 
sington, and  after  dinner,  when  I  spoke  of 
leaving,  Constance  Grey  asked  if  I  would  care  to 
accompany  her  into  Blackfriars.  She  wanted  to  call 
at  Printing  House  Square,  and  ascertain  what 
further  news  had  arrived.  The  implied  intimacy  and 
friendliness  of  the  suggestion  gave  me  a  pleasur- 
able thrill;  it  came  as  something  of  a  reinstatement 
for  me,  and  compensated  for  much.  Constance  Grey's 
views  of  me  had  in  some  way  become  more  important 
to  me  than  anything  else.  I  was  even  now  more  con- 
cerned about  that  than  about  the  news. 

We  made  the  journey  by  omnibus.  I  suggested  a 
cab,  as  in  duty  bound,  but,  doubtless  with  a  thought 
of  my  finances,  my  companion  insisted  upon  the 

153 


THE    MESSAGE 

cheaper  way.  We  had  some  trouble  to  get  seats,  but 
found  them  at  last  on  a  motor  omnibus  bound  for 
Whitechapel.  The  streets  were  densely  crowded,  and 
the  Bank  Holiday  spirit  which  I  had  remarked  before 
was  now  general,  and  much  more  marked. 

"  It  reminds  me  exactly  of  '  Maf eking  Night,'  "  I 
said,  referring  to  that  evening  of  the  South  African 
war  during  which  London  waxed  drunk  upon  the 
news  of  the  relief  of  Mafeking. 

"  Was  it  as  bad  even  then?  "  said  my  companion. 
And  her  question  showed  me,  what  I  might  otherwise 
have  overlooked,  that  a  good  deal  of  water  had 
passed  under  the  bridges  since  South  African  war 
days.  We  had  been  a  little  ashamed  of  our  innocent 
rowdiness  over  the  Mafeking  relief.  We  had  become 
vastly  more  inconsistent  and  less  sober  since  then.  I 
think  the  "Middle  Class  Music  Halls"  had  taken 
their  share  in  the  progress,  by  breaking  down  much 
of  the  staid  reserve  and  self-restraint  of  the  respect- 
able middle  class.  But,  of  course,  one  sees  now  that 
the  rapid  growth  among  us  of  selfish  irresponsibility 
and  repudiation  of  national  obligations  was  the  root 
cause  of  that  change  in  public  behaviour  which  I  saw 
clearly  enough,  once  it  had  been  suggested  to  me  by 
Constance  Grey's  question. 

I  saw  that,  among  the  tens  of  thousands  of  noisy 
promenaders  of  both  sexes  who  filled  the  streets,  and 
impeded  traffic  at  all  crossings,  the  class  which  had 
always  been  rowdily  inclined  was  now  far  more  rowdy, 
and  that  its  ranks  were  reinforced,  doubled  in 
strength,  by  recruits  from  a  class  which,  a  few  years 
before,  had  been  proverbially  noted  for  its  decorous 

154 


SUNDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

and  decent  reserve.  And  this  was  Sunday  Night.  I 
learned  afterwards  that  the  clergy  had  preached  to 
practically  empty  churches.  A  man  we  met  in  The 
Times  office  told  us  of  this,  and  my  companion's  com- 
ment was: 

"  Yes,  even  their  religion  has  less  meaning  for  them 
than  their  pleasure ;  and,  with  religion  a  dead  letter, 
the  spirit  that  won  Trafalgar  and  armed  the  Thames 
against  Napoleon,  must  be  dead  and  buried." 

The  news  we  received  at  The  Times  office  was  ex- 
traordinary. It  seemed  there  was  no  longer  room 
for  the  smallest  doubt  that  a  large  portion  of  East 
Anglia  was  actually  occupied  by  a  German  army. 
Positive  details  of  information  could  not  be  obtained. 

"  The  way  the  coastal  districts  have  been  hermetic- 
ally sealed  against  communication,  and  the  speed  and 
thoroughness  with  which  the  occupation  has  been 
accomplished,  will  remain,  I  believe,  the  most  amaz- 
ing episode  in  the  history  of  warfare,"  said  the 
solemn  graybeard,  to  whom  I  had  been  presented  by 
Constance  Grey.  (If  he  had  known  that  I  was  the 
assistant  editor  of  The  Mass,  I  doubt  if  this  Mr. 
Poole-Smith  would  have  consented  to  open  his  mouth 
in  my  presence.  But  my  obscurity  and  his  impor- 
tance combined  to  shelter  me,  and  I  was  treated  with 
confidence  as  the  friend  of  a  respected  contributor.) 

"  Already  we  know  enough  to  be  certain  that  the 
enemy  has  received  incalculably  valuable  assistance 
from  within.  I  am  afraid  there  will  presently  be 
only  too  much  evidence  of  the  blackest  kind  of  treach- 
ery from  British  subjects,  members  of  one  or  other 
among  the  anti-National  coteries.  But  in  the  mean- 

155 


THE    MESSAGE 

time,  we  hear  of  extraordinary  things  accomplished 
by  aliens  employed  in  this  country,  many  of  them  in 
official  capacities.  We  have  learned  through  the 
Great  Eastern  Railway  Company,  and  through  one 
or  two  shipping  houses,  of  huge  consignments  of 
stores,  and,  I  make  very  little  doubt,  of  munitions  of 
war.  The  thing  must  have  been  in  train  on  this  side 
for  many  months  —  possibly  for  years.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  an  extraordinary  item,  which  is  hardly 
likely  to  be  only  coincidence:  Out  of  one  hundred 
postmasters  within  a  sixty-mile  radius  of  Harwich, 
eighty-one  have  obtained  their  positions  within  the 
last  two  years,  and  of  those  sixty-nine  bear  names 
which  indicate  German  nationality  or  extraction. 
But  that  is  only  one  small  item.  An  analysis  of  the 
Eastern  Railway  employees,  and  of  the  larger  busi- 
ness firms  between  here  and  Ipswich,  will  tell  a  more 
startling  tale,  unless  I  am  greatly  mistaken." 

But  to  me,  I  think  the  part  of  the  news  we  gath- 
ered which  seemed  most  startling  was  the  fact  that  a 
tiny  special  issue  of  The  Times,  then  being  sold  in  the 
streets,  contained  none  of  the  information  given  to 
us,  but  only  a  cautiously  worded  warning  t»  the 
public  that  the  news  received  from  East  Anglia  had 
been  grossly  exaggerated,  and  that  no  definite  impor- 
tance should  be  attached  to  it,  until  authoritative 
information,  which  would  appear  in  the  first  ordinary 
issue  of  The  Times  on  Monday,  had  been  considered. 
It  was  all  worded  very  pompously,  and  vaguely,  in 
a  deprecating  tone,  which  left  it  open  for  the  reader 
to  conclude  that  The  Times  supported  the  generally 
accepted  hoax  theory.  And  we  found  that  all  the 

156 


SUNDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

daily  papers  of  repute  and  standing  had  issued  sim- 
ilar bulletins  to  the  public.  Asked  about  this,  our 
grave  informant  stroked  his  whiskers,  and  alluded 
distantly  to  "  policy  decided  upon  in  consultation 
with  representatives  of  the  Crown." 

"  For  one  thing,  you  see,  London  is  extraordinarily 
full  of  Germans,  though  we  have  already  learned  that 
vast  numbers  of  them  went  to  swell  the  attendance  at 
the  East  Anglian  Pageant,  and  may  now,  for  all  we 
know,  be  under  arms.  Then,  too,  anything  in  the 
nature  of  a  panic  on  a  large  scale,  and  that  before 
the  authorities  have  decided  upon  any  definite  plan  of 
action,  would  be  disastrous.  Unfortunately  our  re- 
ports from  correspondents  at  the  various  southern 
military  depots  are  all  to  the  effect  that  mobilization 
will  be  a  slow  business.  As  you  know,  the  regulars 
in  England  have  been  reduced  to  an  almost  negligi- 
ble minimum,  and  the  mobilization  of  the  '  Haldane 
Army  '  involves  the  slow  process  of  drawing  men  out 
of  private  life  into  the  field.  What  is  worse,  it  means 
in  many  cases  Edinburgh  men  reporting  themselves 
at  Aldershot,  and  south-country  men  reporting  them- 
selves in  the  north.  And  then  their  practical  knowl- 
edge so  far  leaves  them  simply  men  in  the 
street." 

"  But  the  great  trouble  is  that  the  Government  and 
the  official  heads  of  departments  have  been  at  logger- 
heads this  long  time  past,  and  now  are  far  from  arriv- 
ing at  any  definite  policy  of  procedure.  Of  course, 
the  majority  of  the  leaders  are  out  of  town.  You 
will  understand  that  every  possible  precaution  must 
be  taken  to  avoid  unduly  alarming  the  public,  or  pro- 

157 


THE    MESSAGE 

yoking  panic.  We  hope  to  be  able  to  announce 
something  definite  in  the  morning.  The  sympathy 
of  all  the  Powers  will  undoubtedly  be  with  us,  for 
every  known  tenet  of  international  law  has  been  out- 
raged by  this  entirely  unprovoked  invasion." 

"  And  what  do  you  think  will  be  the  practical  effect 
and  use  of  their  sympathy,  Mr.  Poole-Smith  ?  "  asked 
Constance  Grey. 

"  Well,"  said  our  solemn  friend,  caressing  his  whis- 
kers, "  as  to  its  practical  effect,  my  dear  Miss  Grey, 
why,  I  am  afraid  that  in  such  bitter  matters  as  these 
the  practical  value  of  sympathy,  or  of  international 
law,  is  —  er  —  cannot  very  easily  be  defined." 

"  Quite  so.  Exactly  as  I  thought.  It  would  not 
make  one  pennyworth  of  difference,  Mr.  Poole-Smith. 
The  British  public  is  on  the  eve  of  learning  the  mean- 
ing of  brave  old  Lord  Roberts's  teaching:  that  no 
amount  of  diplomacy,  of  '  cordiality,'  of  treaties,  or 
of  anything  else  in  the  repertoire  of  the  disarmament 
party,  can  ever  counterbalance  the  uses  of  the  rifle 
in  the  hands  of  disciplined  men.  Their  twentieth- 
century  notions  will  avail  us  pitifully  little  against 
the  advance  of  the  Kaiser's  legions.  The  brotherhood 
of  man  and  the  sacred  arts  of  commerce  and  peace 
will  have  little  in  the  way  of  reply  to  machine  guns. 
If  only  our  people  could  have  had  even  one  year  of 
universal  military  training !  But  no  ;  they  would  not 
even  pay  for  the  maintenance  of  such  defence  force 
as  they  had  when  it  took  three  years  to  beat  the 
Boers ;  and  now  —  didn't  some  man  write  a  book 
called  '  The  Defenceless  Isles  '?  We  live  in  them." 

"  But  that  is  not  the  worst,  Miss  Grey,"  said  our 
158 


SUNDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

friend.     "  These  are  now  not  only  defenceless,  but 
invaded  isles." 

"  Ah !  How  long  before  they  become  surrendered 
isles,  Mr.  Poole-Smith?  " 

"  The  answer  to  that  is  with  a  higher  Power  than 
any  in  Printing  House  Square,  Miss  Grey.  But, 
let  me  say  this,  in  strict  confidence,  please.  You 
wonder,  and  perhaps  are  inclined  to  condemn  our  — 
well,  our  reticence  about  this  news.  Do  you  know 
my  fear?  It  is  that  if,  in  its  present  mood,  suddenly, 
the  British  public,  and  more  especially  the  London 
public,  were  allowed  to  realize  clearly  both  what  has 
happened  in  East  Anglia,  and  the  monumental  unfit- 
ness  of  our  authorities  and  defences  to  meet  and  cope 
with  such  an  emergency  —  that  then  we  should  see 
England  torn  in  sunder  by  the  most  terrible  revolu- 
tion of  modern  times.  We  should  see  statesmen  hang- 
ing from  lamp-posts  in  Whitehall ;  '  The  Destroyers  ' 
would  be  destroyed ;  the  Crown  would  be  in  danger, 
as  well  as  its  unworthy  servants.  And  the  Kaiser's 
machine-like  army  would  find  it  had  invaded  a  rav- 
aged inferno,  occupied  by  an  infuriated  populace 
hopelessly  divided  against  itself,  and  already  in  the 
grip  of  the  deadliest  kind  of  strife.  That,  I  think, 
is  a  danger  to  be  guarded  against,  so  far  as  it  is 
possible,  at  all  or  any  cost." 

One  could  not  but  be  impressed  by  this  rather 
pompous,  but  sincere  and  earnest  man's  words. 

"  I  see  that  very  clearly,  Mr.  Poole-Smith,"  said 
Constance  Grey.  "  But  can  the  thing  be  done?  Can 
the  public  be  deluded  for  more  than  a  few  hours  ?  " 

"  Not  altogether,  my  dear  young  lady,  not  alto- 
159 


THE    MESSAGE 

gether.  But,  as  we  learn  early  in  journalism,  life  is 
made  up  of  compromises.  We  hope  to  school  them 
to  it,  and  give  them  the  truth  gradually,  with  as  little 
shock  as  may  be." 

Soon  after  this  we  left  the  great  office,  and,  as  we 
passed  out  into  the  crowded  streets,  Constance  Grey 
said  to  me: 

"  Thank  God,  The  Times  managed  to  win  clear  of 
the  syndicate's  clutches  when  it  did.  There  is  moral 
and  strength  of  purpose  there  now.  I  think  the  Press 
is  behaving  finely  —  if  only  the  public  can  be  made  to 
do  as  well.  But,  oh,  '  The  Destroyers  '  —  what  a 
place  they  have  cut  out  for  themselves  in  history ! " 

But  for  the  glorious  summer  weather,  one  could 
have  fancied  Christmas  at  hand  from  the  look  of  Lud- 
gate  Hill.  From  the  Circus  we  took  a  long  look  up 
at  Paul's  great  dome,  massive  and  calm  against  the 
evening  sky.  But  between  it  and  us  was  a  seething 
crowd,  promenading  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  an  hour, 
and  served  by  two  solid  lines  of  vendors  of  useless 
trifles  and  fruit,  and  so  forth. 

Crossing  Ludgate  Circus,  as  we  fought  our  way  to 
the  steps  of  an  omnibus,  was  a  band  of  youths  linked 
arm  in  arm,  and  all  apparently  intoxicated.  There 
must  have  been  forty  in  a  line.  As  they  advanced, 
cutting  all  sorts  of  curious  capers,  they  bawled,  in 
something  like  unison,  the  melancholy  music-hall  re- 
frain : 

"  They'll  never  go  for  England,  because  England's 
got  the  dibs." 

The  crowd  caught  up  the  jingle  as  fire  licks  up 
grass,  and  narrow  Fleet  Street  echoed  to  the  mon- 

160 


SUNDAY  NIGHT  IN  LONDON 

strous  din  of  their  singing.  I  began  to  feel  anxious 
about  getting  Constance  safely  to  her  flat.  Six  out 
of  the  fourteen  people  on  the  top  of  our  omnibus 
were  noticeably  and  noisily  tipsy. 

"  Ah  me,  Dick,  where,  where  is  their  British  re- 
serve? How  I  hate  that  beloved  word  cosmopoli- 
tan!" 

She  looked  at  me,  and  perhaps  that  reminded  her 
of  something. 

"  Forgive  my  familiarity,"  she  said.  "  John  Cron- 
dall  spoke  of  you  as  Dick  Mordan.  It's  rather  a  way 
we  have  —  out  there." 

I  do  not  remember  my  exact  reply,  but  it  earned 
me  the  friendly  short  name  from  her  for  the  future; 
and,  with  England  tumbling  about  our  ears,  for 
aught  we  knew,  that,  somehow,  made  me  curiously 
happy.  But  it  was  none  the  less  with  a  sigh  of  relief 
that  I  handed  her  in  at  the  outer  door  of  the  mansions 
in  which  their  flat  was  situated.  We  paused  for  a 
moment  at  the  stairs'  foot,  the  first  moment  of  privacy 
we  had  known  that  evening,  and  the  last,  I  thought, 
with  a  recollection  of  Mrs.  Van  Homrey  waiting  in 
the  flat  above. 

I  know  I  was  deeply  moved.  My  heart  seemed  full 
to  bursting.  Perhaps  the  great  news  of  that  day 
affected  me  more  than  I  knew.  But  yet  it  seemed  I 
had  no  words,  or  very  few.  I  remember  I  touched 
the  sleeve  of  her  dress  with  my  finger-tips.  What  I 
said  was: 

"  You  know  I  am  —  you  know  I  am  at  your  orders, 
don't  you?" 

And  she  smiled,  with  her  beautiful,  sensitive  mouth, 
161 


THE    MESSAGE 

while  the  light  of  grave  watching  never  flickered  in 
her  eyes. 

"  Yes,  Dick ;  and  thank  you ! "  she  said,  as  we 
began  to  mount  the  stairs. 

Yet  I  was  still  the  assistant  editor  of  The  Mass  — 
Clement  Elaine's  right  hand. 


162 


XVI 

A    PERSONAL    REVELATION 

The  thorns  which  I  have  reap'd  are  of  the  tree 
I  planted  ;  they  have  torn  me,  and  I  bleed. 
I  should  have  known  what  fruit  would  spring  from  such  a  seed. 

BYRON. 

'"T^HAT  Sunday  night  was  not  one  of  London's 
JL  black  nights  that  have  been  so  often  described. 
The  police  began  to  be  a  little  sharp  with  the  people 
after  nine  or  ten  o'clock,  and  by  midnight  the  streets 
were  getting  tolerably  clear.  For  the  great  maj  ority, 
I  believe  it  had  been  a  day  of  more  or  less  pleasur- 
able excitement  and  amusement.  For  the  minority, 
who  were  better  informed,  it  was  a  day  and  night  of 
curious  bewilderment  and  restless  anxiety. 

I  looked  in  at  several  newspaper  offices  on  my  way 
home  from  South  Kensington,  but  found  that  sub- 
ordinate members  of  the  staffs  had  no  information  to 
give,  and  that  their  superiors  maintained  an  attitude 
of  strict  reticence.  As  I  passed  the  dark  windows  of 
my  own  office  I  thought  of  our  "  feature  "  for  the 
coming  week :  the  demand  for  disarmament,  in  order 
that  naval  and  military  expenditure  might  be  diverted 
into  labour  reform  channels ;  Herr  Mitmann's  volu- 
ble assurances  of  the  friendliness  of  the  German  peo- 
ple ;  of  the  ability  and  will  of  the  German  Socialists 

163 


THE    MESSAGE 

to  make  German  aggression  impossible,  for  the  sake 
of  their  brother  workers  in  England. 

I  thought  of  these  things,  and  wished  I  could  spurn 
under  foot  my  connection  with  The  Mass.  Then, 
sitting  at  the  window  of  my  little  bed-sitting-room 
in  Bloomsbury,  I  looked  into  my  petty  finances.  If  I 
left  Clement  Elaine  I  had  enough  to  subsist  upon  for 
six  or  eight  weeks.  It  was  a  risky  business.  Then  I 
pictured  myself  casually  mentioning  to  Constance 
Grey  that  I  was  no  longer  connected  with  The  Mass. 
I  fancied  that  I  saw  the  bright  approval  in  her  eyes. 
Before  blowing  my  light  out,  I  had  composed  the  little 
speech  to  Elaine  which,  in  the  morning,  should  set 
a  period  to  our  connection. 

And  then  I  thought  of  Beatrice.  It  was  barely 
twenty-four  hours  since  we  had  parted  beside  Batter- 
sea  Park  (though  it  seemed  more  like  twenty-four 
days),  and  recollection  showed  me  Beatrice  in  her 
rather  rumpled  finery,  with  the  bleakness  of  the  gray 
hour  that  follows  such  pleasures  as  most  appealed  to 
her,  beginning  to  steal  over  her  handsome  face,  sap- 
ping its  warm  colour,  thinning  and  sharpening  its 
ripe,  smooth  contours.  Beatrice  would  pout  when 
she  heard  of  my  leaving  her  father.  The  thought 
showed  me  her  full  red  lips,  and  the  little  even  white 
teeth  they  so  often  disclosed. 

The  curves  of  Beatrice's  mouth  were  of  a  kind  that 
have  twisted  many  men's  lives  awry ;  and  those  men 
have  thought  straightness  well  lost  for  such  red  lips. 
Yes,  Beatrice  was  good  to  look  upon.  She  had  a  way 
of  throwing  her  head  back,  and  showing  the  smooth, 
round  whiteness  of  her  throat  when  she  laughed,  that 

164 


A    PERSONAL    REVELATION 

had  thrilled  me  time  and  again.  And  how  often,  and 
how  gaily  she  laughed. 

In  the  midst  of  a  picture  of  Beatrice,  laughing  at 
me  across  a  restaurant  table  with  a  raised  glass  in 
her  hand,  I  had  a  shadowy  vision  of  Constance  Grey 
beside  the  foot  of  the  stairs  in  South  Kensington. 
There  was  no  laughter  in  her  face.  I  had  gathered, 
when  I  dined  there,  that  Constance  did  not  care  for 
wine.  She  had  said :  "  I  don't  care  for  anything  that 
makes  me  feel  as  though  I  couldn't  work  if  I  wanted 
to."  How  Beatrice  would  have  scoffed  at  that !  And 
then,  how  Constance  would  have  smiled  over  Bea- 
trice's ideals  —  her  "  fluffy  "  evenings  —  in  a  kind  of 
regretful,  wondering  way ;  almost  as  she  had  smiled 
when  she  first  called  me  "  Dick,"  in  asking  what  had 
become  of  our  staid  English  reserve;  as  she  watched 
the  noisy  crowd  in  Fleet  Street,  singing  its  silly  dog- 
gerel about  England's  security  and  England's 
"  dibs." 

And  then,  suddenly,  my  picture-making  thoughts 
swept  out  across  low  Essex  flats  to  the  only  part  of 
East  Anglia  with  which  I  was  familiar,  and  gave  me 
a  vision  of  burning  farmhouses,  and  terror-smitten 
country-folk  fleeing  blindly  before  a  hail  of  bullets, 
and  the  pitiless  advance  of  legions  of  fair-haired  men 
in  long  coats  of  a  kind  of  roan-gray,  buttoned  across 
the  chest  with  bright  buttons  arranged  to  suggest 
the  inward  curve  to  an  imaginary  waist-line.  The 
faces  of  the  soldiers  were  all  the  same;  they  all  had 
the  face  of  Herr  Mitmann  of  Stettin.  And  a  hot 
wave  of  angry  resentment  and  hatred  of  these 
machine-like  invaders  of  a  peaceful  unprotected 

165 


THE    MESSAGE 

countryside  pulsed  through  my  veins.  Could  they 
dare  —  here  on  English  soil?  My  fists  clenched  under 
the  bed-clothes.  If  it  was  true,  by  heavens,  there  was 
work  for  Englishmen  toward ! 

My  blood  was  hot  at  the  thought.  It  was  perhaps 
the  first  swelling  of  a  patriotic  emotion  I  had  known ; 
the  first  hint  of  any  larger  citizenship  than  that 
which  claims  and  demands,  without  thought  of  giving. 
And,  immediately,  it  was  succeeded  by  a  sharp  chill, 
a  chill  that  ushered  me  into  one  of  the  bitterest  mo- 
ments of  humiliation  that  I  can  remember.  The 
thought  accompanying  that  chill  was  this : 

"  What  can  you  do?  What  are  you  fit  for ?  What 
boy's  part,  even,  can  you  take,  though  the  roof  were 
being  burned  over  your  mother's  head?  What  of 
Constance,  or  Beatrice?  Could  you  strike  a  blow  for 
either?  Work  for  Englishmen,  forsooth!  Yes,  for 
those  of  them  who  have  ever  learned  a  man's  part 
in  such  work.  But  you  —  you  have  never  had  a  gun 
in  your  hand.  What  have  you  done?  You  have 
poured  out  for  your  weekly  wage  so  many  thousands 
of  words ;  words  meaning  —  what  ?  Why,  they  have 
meant  what  the  roadside  beggar  means :  *  Give ! 
Give !  Give ! '  They  have  urged  men  to  demand 
more  from  the  State,  and  give  the  State  nothing;  to 
rob  the  State  of  even  its  defences,  for  the  sake  of 
adding  to  their  own  immediate  ease.  And  you  have 
ridiculed,  as  a  survival  of  barbarous  times,  the  efforts 
of  such  men  as  the  brave  old  Field  Marshal  who  gave 
his  declining  years  to  the  thankless  task  of  urging 
England  to  make  some  effort  of  preparation  to  fend 
off  just  that  very  crisis  which  has  now  come  upon  her, 

166 


A    PERSONAL    REVELATION 

and  found  her  absolutely  unprepared.  That  is  how 
you  have  earned  your  right  to  live,  a  citizen  of  the 
freest  country  in  the  world,  a  subject  of  the  greatest 
Empire  the  world  has  ever  seen.  And  when  you  have 
had  leisure  and  money  to  spend,  you  have  devoted  it 
to  overeating  and  drinking,  and  helping  to  fill  the  tills 
of  alien  parasites  in  Soho.  That  has  been  your  part. 
And  now,  now  that  the  fatal  crisis  has  arrived,  you, 
whose  qualification  is  that  you  can  wield  the  pen  of 
a  begging  letter-writer,  who  is  also  scurrilous  and  in- 
solent —  you  lie  in  bed  and  clench  your  useless  hands, 
and  prate  of  work  for  Englishmen !  " 

That  was  the  thought  that  came  to  me  with  a 
sudden  chill  that  night ;  and  I  suppose  I  was  one  of 
the  earliest  among  millions  doomed  to  writhe  under 
the  impotent  shame  of  such  a  thought.  I  shall  never 
forget  that  night  in  my  Bloomsbury  lodging.  It 
was  my  ordeal  of  self-revelation.  I  suppose  I  slept 
a  little  toward  morning ;  but  I  rose  early  with  a  kind 
of  vague  longing  to  escape  from  the  company  of  the 
personality  my  thought  had  shown  me  in  the  night. 

It  is  natural  that  the  awakening  of  an  individual 
should  be  a  more  speedy  process  than  the  awakening 
of  a  people  —  a  nation.  I  regard  my  early  rising 
on  that  Monday  morning  as  the  beginning  of  my 
first  real  awakening  to  life  as  an  Englishman.  I  had 
still  far  to  go  —  I  had  not  even  crossed  the  threshold 
as  yet. 


167 


xvn 

ONE    STEP    FORWARD 

Thy  trust,  thy  honours,  these  were  great;  the  greater  now  thy 
shame,  for  thou  hast  proved  both  unready  and  unfit,  unworthy 
offspring  of  a  noble  sire!  —  MERKOW'S  Country  Tales. 

FIVE  minutes  after  Clement  Elaine  reached  the 
office  of  The  Mass  that  morning,  he  had  lost 
the  services  of  his  assistant  editor,  and  I  felt  that  I 
had  taken  one  step  upward  from  a  veritable  quag- 
mire of  humiliation. 

Blaine  was  almost  too  excited  about  the  news  of  the 
day  to  pay  much  heed  to  my  little  speech  of  resig- 
nation. The  morning  paper  to  which  he  subscribed 
—  a  Radical  journal  of  pronounced  tone  —  had  ob- 
served far  less  reticence  than  most  of  its  contempora- 
ries, and,  in  its  desire  to  lend  sensational  interest  to 
its  columns,  had  not  minimized  in  any  way  the  start- 
ling character  of  such  intelligence  as  it  had  received. 

"  The  bloodthirsty  German  devils !  "  said  Blaine, 
the  erstwhile  apostle  of  internationalism  and  the 
socialistic  brotherhood  of  man.  "  By  God,  the  Ad- 
miralty and  the  War  Office  ought  to  swing  for  this ! 
Here  are  we  taxed  out  of  house  and  home  to  support 
their  wretched  armies  and  navies,  and  German  sol- 
diers marching  on  London,  they  say,  with  never  a 
sign  of  a  hand  raised  to  oppose  'em  —  damn  them ! 

168 


ONE    STEP   FORWARD 

Nice  time  you  choose  to  talk  of  leaving.  By  God, 
Mordan,  you  may  be  leaving  from  against  a  wall  with 
a  bullet  through  your  head,  next  thing  you  know. 
These  German  devils  don't  wear  kid  gloves,  I  fancy. 
They're  not  like  our  tin-pot  army.  Army!  —  we 
haven't  got  one  —  lot  of  gold-laced  puppets !  " 

That  was  how  Clement  Blaine  was  moved  by  the 
news.  Last  week :  "  Bloated  armaments,"  "  huge 
battalions  of  idle  men  eating  the  heart  out  of  the 
nation  through  its  revenues."  This  week,  we  had  no 
army,  and  because  of  it  the  Admiralty  and  the  War 
Office  ought  to  "  swing."  In  Elaine's  ravings  I  had 
my  foretaste  of  public  opinion  on  the  crisis. 

On  the  previous  day  I  had  listened  to  a  prominent 
Member  of  Parliament  urging  that  our  children 
should  be  preserved  from  the  contamination  of  con- 
tact with  those  who  taught  the  practice  of  the  "  hell- 
ish art  "  of  shooting. 

The  leading  daily  papers  of  this  Monday  morning 
admitted  the  central  fact  that  England  had  been  in- 
vaded during  Saturday  night,  and  even  allowed  read- 
ers to  assume  that  portions  of  the  eastern  counties 
were  then  occupied  by  "  foreign  "  troops.  But  they 
used  the  word  "  raid  "  in  place  of  "  invasion,"  and 
generally  qualified  it  with  such  a  word  as  "  futile." 
The  general  tone  was  that  a  Power  with  whom  we 
had  believed  ourselves  to  be  upon  friendly  terms  had 
been  guilty  of  rash  and  provocative  action  toward 
us,  which  it  would  speedily  be  made  to  regret.  It 
was  an  insult,  which  would  be  promptly  avenged; 
full  atonement  for  which  would  be  demanded  and  ob- 
tained at  once.  It  was  even  suggested  that  some 

169 


THE    MESSAGE 

tragic  misunderstanding  would  be  found  to  lie  at  the 
root  of  the  whole  business ;  and  in  any  case,  things 
were  to  be  set  right  without  delay.  One  journal,  the 
Standard,  did  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  British 
public  was  likely  to  be  forced  now  into  learning  at 
great  cost  a  lesson  which  had  been  offered  daily  as 
a  free  gift  since  the  opening  of  the  century,  and  as 
steadily  repudiated  or  ignored. 

"  Two  things  it  should  teach  England,"  said  this 
journal;  "never  to  invite  insult  and  contempt  by  a 
repetition  of  Sunday's  Disarmament  Demonstration 
or  enunciation  of  its  fallacious  and  dangerous  teach- 
ing ;  and  the  necessity  for  paying  instant  heed  to  the 
warnings  of  the  advocates  of  universal  military  train- 
ing for  purposes  of  home  defence." 

But  at  that  time  the  nicknames  of  the  "  The  Im- 
perialist Banner  "  and  "  The  Patriotic  Pulpit,"  ap- 
plied by  various  writers  and  others  to  this  great 
newspaper,  were  scornful  names,  applied  with  oppro- 
brious intent ;  and  London  was  still  full  of  people 
whose  only  comment  upon  this  sufficiently  badly- 
needed  warning  would  be :  "  Oh,  of  course,  the 
Standard!  " 

But  the  policy  of  reticence,  though  I  have  no  doubt 
that  it  did  save  London  from  some  terrible  scenes  of 
panic,  was  not  to  be  tenable  for  many  hours.  Within 
half  an  hour  of  noon  special  editions  of  a  halfpenny 
morning  paper,  and  an  evening  paper  belonging  to 
the  same  proprietors,  were  issued  simultaneously  with 
a  full,  sensational,  and  quite  unreserved  statement  of 
all  the  news  obtainable  from  East  Anglia.  A  number 
of  motor-cyclists  had  been  employed  in  the  quest  of 

170 


ONE    STEP    FORWARD 

intelligence,  and  one  item  of  the  news  they  had  to 
tell  was  that  Colchester  had  offered  resistance  to  the 
invaders,  and  as  a  result  had  been  shelled  and  burned 
to  the  ground.  A  number  of  volunteers  and  other 
civilians  had  been  found  bearing  arms,  and  had  been 
tried  by  drum-head  court  martial  and  shot  within  the 
hour,  by  order  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
German  forces. 

Another  sensational  item  was  a  copy  of  a  proclama- 
tion issued  by  the  German  Commander-in-Chief.  This 
proclamation  was  dated  from  Ipswich,  and  I  think 
it  struck  more  terror  into  the  people  than  any  other 
single  item  of  intelligence  published  during  that 
eventful  day.  It  was  headed  with  the  Imperial  Ger- 
man Arms,  and  announced  the  establishment  of  Ger- 
man military  jurisdiction  in  England.  It  announced 
that  the  penalty  of  immediate  death  would  be  inflicted 
without  any  exception  upon  any  British  subject  not 
wearing  and  being  entitled  to  wear  British  military 
uniform  who  should  be  found: 

1.  Taking  arms  against  the  invaders. 

2.  Misleading  German  troops. 

3.  Injuring  in  any  manner  whatever  any  German 
subject. 

4.  Injuring  any  road,  rail,  or  waterway,  or  means 
of  communication. 

5.  Offering  resistance  of  any  kind  whatsoever  to 
the  advance  and  occupation  of  the  German  Army. 

Then  followed  peremptory  details  of  instructions 
as  to  the  supplies  which  every  householder  must  fur- 
nish for  the  German  soldiers  quartered  in  his  neigh- 
bourhood, and  an  announcement  as  to  the  supreme 

171 


THE    MESSAGE 

and  inviolable  authority  of  the  German  officer  in 
command  of  any  given  place. 

Nothing  else  yet  published  brought  home  to  the 
public  the  realization  of  what  had  happened  as  did 
this  coldly  pompous  and,  in  the  circumstances,  very 
brutal  proclamation.  And  no  item  in  it  so  bit  into 
the  hearts  of  the  bewildered  Londoners  who  read  it 
as  did  the  clear  incisive  statement  to  the  effect  that 
a  British  subject  who  wore  no  military  uniform  would 
be  shot  like  a  dog  if  he  raised  a  hand  in  the  defence 
of  his  country  or  his  home.  He  must  receive  the  in- 
vader with  open  arms,  and  provide  him  food,  lodging, 
and  assistance  of  every  kind,  or  be  led  out  and  shot. 
There  were  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  in  London 
that  day  who  would  have  given  very  much  for  the 
right  to  wear  a  uniform  which  they  had  learned 
almost  to  despise  of  late  years ;  a  uniform  many  of 
them  had  wished  to  abolish  altogether,  as  the  badge 
of  a  primitive  and  barbarous  trade,  a  "  hellish 
art." 

We  had  talked  glibly  enough  of  war,  of  its  impossi- 
bility in  England,  and  of  the  childish  savagery  of  the 
appeal  to  arms;  just  as,  a  few  years  earlier,  before 
the  naval  reductions,  we  had  talked  of  England's  in- 
violability, secured  her  by  her  unquestioned  mastery 
of  the  sea.  We  had  written  and  spoken  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  fine  words  upon  these  subjects;  and, 
within  the  last  forty-eight  hours,  we  had  demon- 
strated with  great  energy  the  needlessness  of  armed 
forces  for  England.  For  and  against,  about  it  and 
about,  we  had  woven  a  mazy  network  of  windy  plati- 
tudes and  catch-phrases,  all  devised  to  hide  the  mani- 

172 


ONE    STEP    FORWARD 

f  est  and  manly  duties  of  citizenship ;  all  intended  to 
justify  the  individual's  exclusive  concentration  upon 
his  own  personal  pleasures  and  aggrandizement,  with- 
out waste  of  time  or  energy  upon  any  claims  of  the 
commonwealth. 

And  now,  in  a  few  score  of  short,  sharp  words,  in 
a  single  brief  document,  peremptorily  addressed  to 
the  fifty  million  people  of  these  islands,  a  German 
soldier  had  brought  an  end  to  all  our  vapourings,  all 
our  smug,  self-interested  theories,  and  shattered  the 
monstrous  fabric  of  our  complaisance,  as  it  were,  with 
a  rattle  of  his  sword-hilt.  Never  before  in  history 
had  a  people's  vanity  been  so  shaken  by  a  word. 

In  the  early  afternoon  an  unavoidable  errand  took 
me  to  a  northeastern  suburb.  I  made  my  return  to 
town  as  one  among  an  army  of  refugees.  The  people 
had  begun  flocking  into  London  from  as  far  north 
and  east  as  Brentwood.  The  Great  Eastern  Railway 
was  disorganized.  The  northern  highways  leading 
into  London  were  occupied  by  unbroken  lines  of  peo- 
ple journeying  into  the  city  for  protection  —  afoot, 
in  motor-cars,  on  cycles,  and  in  every  kind  of  horse- 
drawn  vehicle,  and  carrying  with  them  the  strangest 
assortment  of  personal  belongings. 

At  the  earliest  possible  hour  I  made  my  way  toward 
South  Kensington.  I  told  myself  there  might  be 
something  I  could  do  for  Constance  Grey.  Beyond 
that  there  was  the  fact  that  I  craved  another  sight 
of  her,  and  I  longed  to  hear  her  comment  when  she 
knew  I  had  finished  with  The  Mass. 

A  porter  on  the  Underground  Railway  told  me  that 
the  Southwestern  and  Great  Western  termini  were 

173 


THE    MESSAGE 

blocked  by  feverish  crowds  of  well-to-do  people, 
struggling,  with  their  children,  for  places  in  trains 
bound  south  and  west.  Huge  motor-cars  of  the  more 
luxurious  type  whizzed  past  one  in  the  street  continu- 
ously, their  canopies  piled  high  with  bags,  their  bodies 
full  of  women  and  children,  their  chaffeurs  driving 
hard  toward  the  southern  and  western  highways. 

Outside  South  Kensington  station  I  had  my  first 
sight  of  a  Royal  Proclamation  upon  the  subject  of 
the  invasion.  Evidently  the  Government  realized 
that,  prepared  or  unprepared,  the  state  of  affairs 
could  no  longer  be  hidden  from  the  public.  The  King 
was  at  Buckingham  Palace  that  day  I  knew,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  read  rather  his  Majesty's  own 
sentiments  than  those  of  his  Cabinet  in  the  Proclama- 
tion. I  gathered  that  the  general  public  also  formed 
this  impression. 

There  is  no  need  for  me  to  reproduce  a  document 
which  forms  part  of  our  history.  The  King's  famous 
reference  to  the  Government  —  "  The  Destroyers  " 
—  "  Though  admittedly  unprepared  for  such  a  blow, 
my  Government  is  taking  prompt  steps  for  coping  in 
a  decisive  manner,"  etc. ;  and  again,  the  equally  fa- 
mous reference  to  the  German  Emperor,  in  the  sen- 
tence beginning :  "  This  extraordinary  attack  by  the 
armed  forces  of  my  Royal  and  Imperial  nephew." 
These  features  of  a  nobly  dignified  and  restrained 
Address  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  really  direct  communi- 
cation from  their  Sovereign  to  the  English  people. 
Whatever  might  be  said  of  the  position  of  "  The 
Destroyers  "  in  Whitehall,  it  became  evident,  even  at 
this  early  stage,  that  the  Throne  was  in  no  danger  — 

174 


ONE    STEP    FORWARD 

that  the  sanctity  pertaining  to  the  person  of  the 
Monarch  who,  as  it  were  in  despite  of  his  Government, 
had  done  more  for  the  true  cause  of  peace  than  any 
other  in  Europe,  remained  inviolate  in  the  hearts  of 
the  people. 

For  the  rest,  the  Proclamation  was  a  brief,  simple 
statement  of  the  facts,  with  an  equally  simple  but 
very  heart-stirring  appeal  to  every  subject  of  the 
Crown  to  concentrate  his  whole  energies,  under 
proper  guidance,  upon  the  task  of  repelling  "  this 
dastardly  and  entirely  unprovoked  attack  upon  our 
beloved  country." 

I  heard  many  deeply  significant  and  interesting 
comments  from  the  circle  of  men  and  women  who  were 
reading  this  copy  of  the  Proclamation.  The  remarks 
of  two  men  I  repeat  here  because  in  both  cases  they 
were  typical  and  representative.  The  first  remark 
was  from  a  man  dressed  as  a  navvy,  with  a  short  clay 
pipe  in  his  mouth.  He  said: 

"  Oh,  yus ;  the  King's  all  right ;  Gawd  bless  un ! 
No  one  'Id  mind  fightin'  for  'im.  It's  'is  blighted 
Gov'nment  wot's  all  bloomin'  wrong  —  blast  'em !  " 

The  reply  came  from  a  young  man  evidently  of 
sedentary  occupation  —  a  shop-assistant  or  clerk : 

"  You're  all  right,  too,  old  sport ;  but  don't  you 
forget  the  other  feller's  proclamation.  If  you  'aven't 
got  no  uniform,  your  number's  up  for  lead  pills,  an' 
don't  you  forget  it.  A  fair  fight  an'  no  favour's  all 
right;  but  I'm  not  on  in  this  blooming  execution  act, 
thank  you.  Edward  R.  I.  will  have  to  pass  me,  I  can 
see." 

"  Well,  'e  won't  lose  much  matey,  when  all's  said. 
175 


THE    MESSAGE 

But  you're  English,  anyway ;  that  seems  a  pity. 
Why  don't  yer  run  'ome  ter  yer  ma,  eh  ?  " 

"  Go  it,  old  sport.  You're  a  blue-blooded  Tory ; 
an  Imperialist,  aren't  you?  " 

"  Not  me,  boy ;    I'm  only  an  able-bodied  man." 

"  What  ho !  Got  a  flag  in  your  pocket,  have  you  ? 
You  watch  the  Germans  don't  catch  you  fer  sausage 
meat." 

And  then  I  passed  on,  heading  for  Constance 
Grey's  flat.  I  reflected  that  I  had  done  my  share 
toward  forming  the  opinions,  the  mental  attitude  of 
that  young  clerk  or  shop-assistant.  The  type  was 
familiar  enough.  But  I  had  had  no  part  nor  lot  in 
the  preservation  of  that  navvy's  simple  patriotism. 
Rather,  by  a  good  deal,  had  the  tendency  of  all  I 
said  and  wrote  been  toward  weakening  the  sturdy 
growth,  and  causing  it  to  be  deprecated  as  a  thing 
archaic,  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  progress. 

Progress !  The  expounding  of  Herr  Mitmann  of 
Stettin!  That  Monday  was  a  minor  day  of  judg- 
ment for  others  beside  myself. 


176 


XVIII 

THE    DEAR    LOAF 

A  third  of  the  people,  then,  in  the  event  of  war,  would  immedi- 
ately be  reduced  to  starvation:  and  the  rest  of  the  thirty-eight 
million  would  speedily  be  forced  thither.  —  L.  COPE  COENFORD'S 
The  Defenceless  Islands  (London,  1906). 

I  SAW  Constance  Grey  only  for  a  few  minutes  dur- 
ing that  day.  She  had  passed  the  stage  of 
shocked  sorrow  and  sad  fear  in  which  I  had  found 
her  on  Sunday,  and  was  exceedingly  busy  in  organiz- 
ing a  corps  of  assistant  nurses,  women  who  had  had 
some  training,  and  were  able  to  provide  a  practical 
outfit  of  nursing  requisites.  She  had  the  countenance 
of  the  Army  Medical  authorities,  but  her  nursing 
corps  was  to  consist  exclusively  of  volunteers. 

The  organizing  ability  this  girl  displayed  was  ex- 
traordinary. She  spared  five  minutes  for  conversa- 
tion, and  warmed  my  heart  with  her  appreciation  of 
my  severance  of  The  Mass  connection.  And  then, 
before  I  knew  what  had  happened,  she  had  me  im- 
pressed, willingly  enough,  in  her  service,  and  I  was 
off  upon  an  errand  connected  with  the  volunteer 
nursing  corps.  News  had  arrived  of  some  wounded 
refugees  in  Romford,  unable  to  proceed  on  their  way 
into  London ;  and  a  couple  of  motor-cars,  with  nurses 
and  medical  comforts,  were  despatched  at  once. 

177 


THE    MESSAGE 

Detailed  news  of  the  sacking  of  Colchester  showed 
this  to  have  been  a  most  extraordinarily  brutal  affair 
for  the  work  of  a  civilized  army.  The  British  regu- 
lar troops  at  Colchester  represented  the  whole  of  our 
forces  of  the  northeastern  division,  and  included  three 
batteries  of  artillery.  The  regiments  of  this  division 
had  been  reduced  to  three,  and  for  eighteen  months 
or  more  these  had  been  mere  skeletons  of  regiments, 
the  bulk  of  the  men  being  utilized  to  fill  other  gaps 
caused  by  the  consistently  followed  policy  of  reduc- 
tion which  had  characterized  "  The  Destroyers' ' 
regime. 

A  German  spy  who  had  been  captured  in  Romford 
and  brought  to  London,  said  that  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  German  forces  in  England  had  publicly 
announced  to  his  men  that  the  instructions  received 
from  their  Imperial  master  were  that  the  pride  of  the 
British  people  must  be  struck  down  to  the  dust ;  that 
the  first  blows  must  be  crushing;  that  the  British 
people  were  to  be  smitten  with  terror  from  which 
recovery  should  be  impossible. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  sacking  of  Colchester  was  a 
terrible  business.  A  number  of  citizens  had  joined 
the  shockingly  small  body  of  regulars  in  a  gallant 
attempt  at  defence.  The  attempt  was  quite  hopeless ; 
the  German  superiority  in  numbers,  discipline,  metal, 
and  material  being  quite  overwhelming.  But  the 
German  commander  was  greatly  angered  by  the  re- 
sistance offered,  and,  as  soon  as  he  ascertained  that 
civilians  had  taken  part  in  this,  the  town  was  first 
shelled  and  then  stormed.  It  was  surrounded  by  a 
cordon  of  cavalry,  and  —  no  prisoners  were  taken. 

178 


THE    DEAR    LOAF 

The  town  was  burned  to  the  ground,  though  many 
valuable  stores  were  first  removed  from  it ;  and  those 
of  the  inhabitants  who  had  not  already  fled  were 
literally  mown  down  in  their  native  streets,  without 
parley  or  quarter  —  men,  women,  and  children  being 
alike  regarded  as  offenders  against  the  edict  forbid- 
ding any  civilian  British  subject,  upon  pain  of  death, 
to  offer  any  form  of  resistance  to  German  troops. 
I  myself  spoke  to  a  man  in  Knightsbridge  that  eve- 
ning who  had  definite  news  that  his  nineteen-year-old 
daughter,  a  governess  in  the  house  of  a  Colchester 
doctor,  was  among  those  shot  down  in  the  streets  of 
the  town  while  endeavouring  to  make  her  escape  with 
two  children.  The  handful  of  British  regulars  had 
been  shot  or  cut  to  pieces,  and  the  barracks  and  stores 
taken  over  by  the  Germans. 

As  I  left  Constance  Grey's  flat  that  evening  I 
passed  a  small  baker's  shop,  before  which  an  angry 
crowd  was  engaged  in  terrifying  a  small  boy  in  a 
white  apron,  who  was  nervously  endeavouring  to  put 
up  the  window  shutters.  I  asked  what  the  trouble 
was,  and  was  told  the  baker  had  refused  to  sell  his 
half-quartern  loaves  under  sevenpence,  or  his  quar- 
tern loaves  under  a  shilling. 

"  It's  agin  the  law,  so  it  is,"  shouted  an  angry 
woman.  "  I'm  a  policeman's  wife,  an'  I  know  what 
I'm  talking  about.  I'll  have  the  law  of  the  nasty 
mean  hound,  so  I  will,  with  his  shillin'  for  a  fivepenny 
loaf,  indeed !  " 

Long  before  this  time,  and  while  Britain  still  held 
on  to  a  good  proportion  of  her  foreign  trade,  it  had 
been  estimated  by  statisticians  that  in  the  United 

179 


THE    MESSAGE 

Kingdom  some  ten  to  twelve  million  persons  lived 
always  upon  the  verge  of  hunger.  But  since  then  the 
manufacturers  of  protected  countries,  notably  Ger- 
many and  the  United  States,  had,  as  was  inevitable 
in  the  face  of  our  childish  clinging  to  what  we  mis- 
called "  free  "  trade,  crowded  the  British  manufac- 
turer out  of  practically  every  market  in  the  world, 
except  those  of  Canada.  Those  also  must  of  necessity 
have  been  lost,  but  for  the  forbearing  and  enduring 
loyalty  of  the  Canadian  people,  who,  in  spite  of  per- 
sistent rebuffs,  continue4  to  extend  and  to  increase 
their  fiscal  preference  for  imports  from  the  Mother- 
country. 

But,  immense  as  Canada's  growth  was  even  then, 
no  one  country  could  keep  the  manufacturers  of 
Britain  busy ;  and  I  believe  I  am  right  in  saying  that 
at  this  time  the  number  of  those  who  lived  always  on 
the  verge  of  hunger  had  increased  to  at  least  fifteen 
millions.  Cases  innumerable  there  were  in  which 
manufacturers  themselves  had  gone  to  swell  the  ranks 
of  the  unemployed  and  insufficiently  employed;  the 
monstrous  legion  of  those  who  lived  always  close  to 
the  terrifying  spectre  of  hunger. 

If  the  spirit  of  Richard  Cobden  walked  the  earth 
at  that  time,  even  as  his  obsessions  assuredly  still 
cumbered  it,  it  must  have  found  food  for  bitter  re- 
flection in  the  hundreds  of  empty  factories,  grass- 
grown  courtyards,  and  broken-windowed  warehouses, 
which  a  single  day's  walk  would  show  one  in  the  north 
of  England. 

You  may  be  sure  I  thought  of  those  things  as  I 
walked  away  from  that  baker's  shop  in  South  Ken- 

180 


THE    DEAR    LOAF 

sington.  A  journalist,  even  though  he  be  only  the 
assistant  of  a  man  like  Blaine,  is  apt  to  see  the  condi- 
tions of  life  in  his  country  fairly  plainly,  because  he 
has  a  wider  vision  of  them  than  most  men.  Into  Fleet 
Street,  each  day  brings  an  endless  stream  of  "  news 
items,"  not  only  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  but  from 
every  town  and  city  in  the  kingdom.  And  your  jour- 
nalist, though  he  may  have  scant  leisure  for  its  diges- 
tion, absorbs  the  whole  of  this  mass  of  intelligence 
each  day  in  the  process  of  conveying  one-tenth  part 
of  it,  in  tabloid  form,  to  the  public. 

If  one  assumes  for  the  moment  that  only  twelve 
million  people  in  Great  Britain  were  living  on  hun- 
ger's extreme  edge  at  that  time,  the  picture  I  had  of 
the  sullen,  angry  crowd  outside  the  baker's  shop  re- 
mains a  sufficiently  sinister  one.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
I  believe  that  particular  baker  was  a  shade  prema- 
ture, or  a  penny  or  two  excessive,  in  his  advance  of 
prices.  But  I  know  that  by  nightfall  you  could  not 
have  purchased  a  quartern  loaf  for  elevenpence  half- 
penny within  ten  miles  of  Charing  Cross.  The 
Bakers'  Society  had  issued  its  mandates  broadcast. 
Shop-windows  were  stoned  that  night  in  south  and 
east  London ;  but  twenty-four  hours  later  the  price 
of  the  quartern  loaf  was  Is.  3d.,  and  a  man  offering 
Is.  2d.  would  go  empty  away. 

And  with  the  same  loaf  selling  at  one-third  the 
price,  twelve  million  persons  at  least  had  lived  always 
on  the  verge  of  hunger.  I  mention  the  staple  food 
only,  but  precisely  the  same  conditions  applied  to  all 
other  food-stuffs  with  the  exception  of  dairy  produce, 
the  price  of  which  was  quadrupled  by  Tuesday  after- 

181 


THE   MESSAGE 

noon,  and  fish,  the  price  of  which  put  it  at  once 
beyond  the  reach  of  all  save  the  rich,  and  all  delica- 
cies, the  prices  of  which  became  prohibitive.  Twelve 
million  persons  had  lived  on  the  verge  of  hunger, 
before,  under  normal  conditions,  and  when  the  coun- 
try's trade  had  been  far  larger  and  more  prosperous 
than  of  late.  Now,  with  the  necessities  of  lif  e  stand- 
ing at  fully  three  times  normal  prices,  a  large  number 
of  trades  employing  many  thousands  of  work-people 
were  suddenly  shut  down  upon,  and  rendered  com- 
pletely inoperative. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  we  had  been  warned 
again  and  again  that  matters  would  be  precisely  thus 
and  not  otherwise  in  the  event  of  war,  and  we  had 
paid  no  heed  whatever  to  the  telling. 

Historians  have  explained  for  us  that  the  primary 
reason  of  the  very  sudden  rise  to  famine  rates  of  the 
prices  of  provisions  was  the  persistent  rumour  that 
the  effective  bulk  of  the  Channel  Fleet  had  been  cap- 
tured or  destroyed  on  its  way  northward  from  Span- 
ish waters.  German  strategy  had  drawn  the  Fleet 
southward,  in  the  first  place,  by  means  of  an  inter- 
national "  incident  "  in  the  Mediterranean,  which  was 
clearly  the  bait  of  what  rumour  called  a  death-trap. 
Once  trapped,  it  was  said,  German  seamanship  and 
surprise  tactics  had  done  the  rest. 

The  crews  of  the  Channel  Fleet  ships  (considerably 
below  full  strength)  had  been  rushed  out  of  shore 
barracks,  in  which  discipline  had  fallen  to  a  terribly 
low  ebb,  to  their  unfamiliar  shipboard  stations,  at  the 
time  of  the  Mediterranean  scare.  Beset  by  the  flower 
of  the  German  Navy,  in  ships  manned  by  crews  who 

182 


THE    DEAR    LOAF 

Kred  afloat,  it  was  asserted  that  the  Channel  Fleet  had 
been  annihilated,  and  that  the  entire  force  of  the 
German  Navy  was  concentrated  upon  the  task  of 
patrolling  English  waters. 

We  know  that  men  and  horses,  stores  and  muni- 
tions of  war,  were  pouring  steadily  and  continuously 
into  East  Angtia  from  Germany  daring  this  time,  es- 
corted by  German  cruisers  and  torpedo-boats,  and 
uninterrupted  by  British  ships.  There  was  yet  no 
report  of  the  Channel  Fleet,  the  ships  of  which 
were  already  twenty-four  hours  overdue  at  Ports- 
mouth. 

Two  things,  more  than  any  others,  had  influenced 
the  British  Navy  during  the  Administration  of  "  The 
Destroyers  " :  the  total  cessation  of  building  opera- 
tions, and  the  withdrawal  of  ships  and  men  from  sea 
service.  The  reserve  ships  had  long  been  unfit  to  put 
to  sea,  the  reserve  crews  had,  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses, become  landsmen  —  landsmen  among  whom 
want  of  sea-going  discipline  had  of  late  produced 
many  mutinous  outbreaks. 

It  had  been  said  by  the  most  famous  admiral  of  the 
time,  and  said  without  much  exaggeration,  that, 
within  twelve  months  of  "  The  Destroyers' "  aban- 
donment of  the  traditional  two-Power  standard  of 
efficiency,  the  British  Navy  had  u  fallen  to  half- 
Power  standard."  The  process  was  quickened,  of 
course,  by  the  unprecedented  progress  of  the  German 
Navy  during  the  same  period.  It  was  said  that  at  the 
end  of  1907  the  German  Government  had  ships  of 
war  building  in  every  great  dockyard  in  the  world. 
It  is  known  that  the  entire  fleet  of  the  u  Kaiser  "  class 

1S3 


THE    MESSAGE 

torpedo-boats  and  destroyers  was  built  and  set  afloat 
at  the  German  Emperor's  own  private  expense. 

Then  there  were  the  "  Well-borns,"  as  they  were 
called  —  vessels  of  no  great  weight  of  metal,  it  is 
true,  but  manned,  armed,  officered,  and  found  better 
perhaps  than  any  other  war-ships  in  the  world;  en- 
tirely at  the  instigation  of  the  German  Navy  League, 
and  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  German  nobility.  The 
majority  of  our  own  wealthy  classes  preferred  sink- 
ing their  money  in  German  motor-cars  and  German 
pleasure  resorts ;  or  one  must  assume  so,  for  it  is  well 
known  that  our  Navy  League  had  long  since  ceased 
to  exert  any  active  influence,  because  it  was  unable  to 
raise  funds  enough  to  pay  its  office  expenses. 

Our  Navy  might  have  had  a  useful  reserve  to  draw 
upon  in  the  various  auxiliary  naval  bodies  if  these 
had  not,  one  by  one,  been  abolished.  The  Mercantile 
Marine  was  not  in  a  position  to  lend  much  assistance 
in  this  respect,  for  our  ships  at  that  time  carried 
eighty-seven  thousand  foreign  officers  and  men,  three 
parts  of  whom  were  Teutons.  These  facts  were  pre- 
sumably all  well  known  to  the  heads  and  governing 
bodies  of  the  various  trades,  and,  that  being  so,  the 
extremely  pessimistic  attitude  adopted  by  them,  di- 
rectly the  fact  of  invasion  was  established,  is  scarcely 
to  be  wondered  at. 

In  banking,  insurance,  underwriting,  stock  and 
share  dealing,  manufacturing,  and  in  every  branch 
of  shipping  the  lead  of  the  bakers  were  followed,  and 
in  many  cases  exceeded.  The  premiums  asked  in  in- 
surance and  underwriting,  and  the  unprecedented 
advance  in  the  bank-rate,  corresponding  as  it  did 

184 


THE    DEAR   LOAF 

with  a  hopeless  "  slump  "  in  every  stock  and  share 
quoted  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  from  Consols  to  min- 
ing shares,  brought  business  to  a  standstill  in  London 
on  Monday  afternoon. 

On  Tuesday  entire  blocks  of  offices  remained  un- 
opened. In  business,  more  perhaps  than  in  any  other 
walk  of  life,  self-preservation  and  self-advancement 
were  at  that  time,  not  alone  the  first,  but  the  only 
fixed  law.  With  bread  at  Is.  4d.  a  loaf,  great  ship- 
owners in  England  were  cabling  the  masters  of  wheat 
ships  in  both  hemispheres  to  remain  where  they  were 
and  await  orders. 

This  last  fact  I  learned  from  Leslie  Wheeler,  whom 
I  happened  to  meet  hurrying  from  the  City  to  Water- 
loo, on  his  way  down  to  Weybridge.  His  family  were 
leaving  for  Devonshire  next  morning,  to  stay  with 
relatives  there. 

"  But,  bless  me ! "  I  said,  when  he  told  me  that 
friends  of  his  father,  shipping  magnates,  had  des- 
patched such  cable  messages  that  morning,  "  surely 
that's  a  ruffianly  thing  to  do,  when  the  English  people 
are  crying  out  for  bread  ?  " 

Leslie  shrugged  his  smartly-clad  shoulders.  "  It's 
the  English  people's  own  affair,"  he  said. 

"How's  that?" 

"  Why,  you  see  it's  all  a  matter  of  insurance.  All 
commerce  is  based  on  insurance,  in  one  form  or  an- 
other. The  cost  of  shipping  insurance  to-day  is  ab- 
solutely prohibitive;  in  other  words,  there  isn't  any. 
We  did  have  a  permanent  and  non-fluctuating  form 
of  insurance  of  a  kind  one  time.  But  you  Socialist 
chaps  —  social  reform,  Little  England  for  the  Eng- 

185 


THE    MESSAGE 

lish,  and  all  that  —  you  swept  that  away.  Wouldn't 
pay  for  it;  said  it  wasn't  wanted.  Now  it's  gone, 
and  you're  feeling  the  pinch.  The  worst  of  it  is,  you 
make  the  rest  of  us  feel  it,  too.  I'm  thankful  to  say 
the  dad's  pulling  out  fairly  well.  He  told  me  yester- 
day he  hadn't  five  hundred  pounds  in  anything  Brit- 
ish. Wise  old  bird,  the  dad !  " 

My  friend's  "  You  Socialist  chaps  "  rather  wrang 
my  withers ;  its  sting  not  being  lessened  at  all  by  my 
knowledge  of  its  justice.  I  asked  after  the  welfare 
of  the  Wheeler  family  generally,  but  it  was  only  as 
Leslie  was  closing  the  door  of  the  cab  he  hailed  that 
I  mentioned  Sylvia. 

"  Yes,  Sylvia's  all  right,"  he  said,  as  he  waved  me 
good-bye ;  "  but  she  won't  come  away  with  the  rest 
of  us  —  absolutely  refuses  to  budge." 

And  with  that  he  was  off,  leaving  me  wondering 
about  the  girl  who  had  at  one  time  occupied  so  much 
of  my  mind,  but  of  late  had  had  so  little  of  it.  Dur- 
ing the  next  few  hours  I  wove  quite  a  pretty  story 
round  Sylvia's  refusal  to  accompany  her  family.  I 
even  thought  of  her  as  joining  Constance  Grey's 
nursing  corps. 

The  thought  of  this  development  of  Sylvia  Wheel- 
er's character  interested  me  so  much  that  I  wrote  to 
her  that  evening,  tentatively  sympathizing  with  her 
determination  not  to  be  frightened  away  from  her 
own  place.  The  whole  thing  was  a  curious  misappre- 
hension on  my  part;  but  Sylvia's  reply  (explaining 
that  it  was  her  particular  place  of  worship  she  re- 
fused to  leave,  and  that  she  was  staying  "  with  his 

186 


THE    DEAR    LOAF 

Reverence's  sister  "),  though  written  within  twenty- 
four  hours,  did  not  reach  me  until  after  many 
days  —  days  such  as  England  will  never  face 
again. 


187 


XIX 

THE    TRAGIC    WEEK 

England  can  never  have  an  efficient  army  during  peace,  and  she 
must,  therefore,  accept  the  rebuffs  and  calamities  which  are  always 
in  store  for  the  nation  that  is  content  to  follow  the  breed  of  cow- 
ards who  usually  direct  her  great  affairs.  The  day  will  come  when 
she  will  violently  and  suddenly  lose  her  former  fighting  renown  to 
such  an  unmistakable  extent  that  the  plucky  fishwives  will  march 
upon  Downing  Street,  and  if  they  can  catch  its  usual  inmates,  will 
read  them.  One  party  is  as  bad  as  the  other,  and  I  hope  and  pray 
that  when  the  national  misfortune  of  a  great  defeat  at  sea  over- 
takes us,  followed  by  the  invasion  of  England,  that  John  Bull  will 
turn  and  rend  the  jawers  and  talkers  who  prevent  us  from  being 
prepared  to  meet  invasion.  —  From  a  letter  written  by  Lord  Wolsley, 
ex-Commander-in-Chief  of  the  British  Army,  to  Lord  Wemyss,  and 
published,  and  ignored  by  the  public,  in  the  year  1906. 

IT  is  no  part  of  my  intention  to  make  any  attempt 
to  limp  after  the  historians  of  the  Invasion.  The 
Official  History,  the  half-dozen  of  standard  military 
treatises,  and  the  well-known  works  of  Low,  Forster, 
Gordon,  and  others,  have  allowed  few  details  of  the 
Invasion  to  escape  unrecorded.  But  I  confess  it  has 
always  seemed  to  me  that  these  writers  gave  less  atten- 
tion to  the  immediate  aftermath  of  the  Invasion  than 
that  curious  period  demanded.  Yet  here  was  surely 
a  case  in  which  effect  was  of  vastly  more  inportance 
than  cause,  and  aftermath  than  crisis.  But  perhaps 
I  take  that  view  because  I  am  no  historian. 

188 


THE    TRAGIC    WEEK 

To  the  non-expert  mind,  the  most  bewildering  and 
extraordinary  feature  of  that  disastrous  time  was  the 
amazing  speed  with  which  crisis  succeeded  crisis,  and 
events,  each  of  themselves  epoch-making  in  character, 
crashed  one  upon  another  throughout  the  progress 
toward  Black  Saturday.  We  know  now  that  much 
of  this  fury  of  haste  which  was  so  bewildering  at  the 
time,  which  certainly  has  no  parallel  in  history,  was 
due  to  the  perfection  of  Germany's  long-laid  plans. 
Major-General  Farquarson,  in  his  "  Military  History 
of  the  Invasion,"  says: 

"  It  may  be  doubted  whether  in  all  the  history  of 
warfare  anything  so  scientifically  perfect  as  the  prep- 
arations for  this  attack  can  be  found.  It  is  safe  to 
say  that  every  inch  of  General  von  Fiichter's  prog- 
ress was  mapped  out  in  Berlin  long  months  before 
it  came  to  astound  and  horrify  England.  The  maps 
and  plans  in  the  possession  of  the  German  staff  were 
masterpieces  of  cartographical  science  and  art.  The 
German  Army  knew  almost  to  a  bale  of  hay  what 
provender  lay  between  London  and  the  coast,  and 
where  it  was  stored ;  and  certainly  their  knowledge  of 
East  Anglia  far  exceeded  that  of  our  own  authorities. 
The  world  has  never  seen  a  quicker  blow  struck;  it 
has  seldom  seen  a  blow  so  crushingly  severe;  it  has 
not  often  seen  one  so  aggressively  unjustifiable.  And, 
be  it  noted,  that  down  to  the  last  halter  and  the  least 
fragment  of  detail,  the  German  Army  was  provided 
with  every  conceivable  aid  to  success  —  in  duplicate. 

"  Never  in  any  enterprise  known  to  history  was 
less  left  to  chance.  The  German  War  Office  left 
nothing  at  all  to  chance,  not  even  its  conception  —  a 

189 


THE    MESSAGE 

certainty  really  —  of  Britain's  amazing  unreadiness. 
And  the  German  Army  took  no  risks.  A  soldier's 
business,  whether  he  be  private  or  Field  Marshal,  is, 
after  all,  to  obey  orders.  It  would  be  both  foolish 
and  unjust  to  blame  General  von  Fiichter.  But  the 
fact  remains  that  no  victorious  army  ever  risked  less 
by  generosity  than  the  invading  German  Army.  Its 
tactics  were  undoubtedly  ruthless ;  they  were  the  tac- 
tics necessitated  by  the  orders  of  the  Chief  of  the 
Army.  They  were  more  severe,  more  crushing,  than 
any  that  have  ever  been  adopted  even  by  a  punitive 
expedition  under  British  colours.  They  were  suc- 
cessful. For  that  they  were  intended.  Swiftness  and 
thoroughness  were  of  the  essence  of  the  contract. 

"  With  regard  to  their  humanity  or  morality  I  am 
not  here  concerned.  But  it  should  always  be  remem- 
bered by  critics  that  British  apathy  and  neglect  made 
British  soil  a  standing  temptation  to  the  invader. 
The  invasion  was  entirely  unprovoked,  so  far  as  di- 
rect provocation  goes.  But  who  shall  say  it  was 
entirely  undeserved,  or  even  unforeseen,  by  advisers 
whom  the  nation  chose  to  ignore?  This  much  is  cer- 
tain :  Black  Saturday  and  the  tragic  events  leading 
up  to  it  were  made  possible,  not  so  much  by  the  skill 
and  forethought  of  the  enemy,  which  were  notable, 
as  by  a  state  of  affairs  in  England  which  made  that 
day  one  of  shame  and  humiliation,  as  well  as  a  day 
of  national  mourning.  No  just  recorder  may  hope 
to  escape  that  fact." 

In  London,  the  gravest  aspect  of  that  tragic  week 
was  the  condition  of  the  populace.  It  is  supposed 
that  over  two  million  people  flocked  into  the  capital 

190 


THE    TRAGIC   WEEK 

during  the  first  three  days.  And  the  prices  of  the 
necessities  of  life  were  higher  in  London  than  any- 
where else  in  the  country.  The  Government  measures 
for  relief  were  ill-considered  and  hopelessly  inade- 
quate. But,  in  justice  to  "  The  Destroyers,"  it  must 
be  remembered  that  leading  authorities  have  said  that 
adequate  measures  were  impossible,  from  sheer  lack  of 
material. 

During  one  day  —  I  think  it  was  Wednesday  — 
huge  armies  of  the  hungry  unemployed  —  nine-tenths 
of  our  wage-earners  were  unemployed  —  were  set  to 
work  upon  entrenchments  in  the  north  of  London. 
But  there  was  no  sort  of  organization,  and  most  of 
the  men  streamed  back  into  the  town  that  night,  un- 
paid, unfed,  and  sullenly  resentful. 

Then,  like  cannon  shots,  came  the  reports  of  the 
fall  of  York,  Bradford,  Leeds,  Halifax,  Hull,  and 
Huddersfield,  and  the  apparently  wanton  demolition 
of  Norwich  Cathedral.  The  sinking  of  the  Dread- 
nought near  the  Nore  was  known  in  London  within 
the  hour.  Among  the  half-equipped  regulars  who 
were  hurried  up  from  the  southwest,  I  saw  dozens  of 
men  intercepted  in  the  streets  by  the  hungry  crowds, 
and  hustled  into  leaving  their  fellows. 

Then  came  Friday's  awful  "  surrender  riot "  at 
Westminster,  a  magnificent  account  of  which  gives 
Martin's  big  work  its  distinctive  value.  I  had  left 
Constance  Grey's  flat  only  half  an  hour  before  the 
riot  began,  and  when  I  reached  Trafalgar  Square 
there  was  no  space  between  that  and  the  Abbey  in 
which  a  stone  could  have  been  dropped  without  fall- 
ing upon  a  man  or  a  woman.  There  were  women  in 

191 


that  maddened  throng,  and  some  of  them,  crying 
hoarsely  in  one  breath  for  surrender  and  for  bread, 
were  suckling  babies. 

No  Englishman  who  witnessed  it  could  ever  forget 
that  sight.  The  Prime  Minister's  announcement  that 
the  surrender  should  be  made  came  too  late.  The 
panic  and  hunger-maddened  incendiaries  had  been  at 
work.  Smoke  was  rising  already  from  Downing 
Street  and  the  back  of  the  Treasury.  Then  came  the 
carnage.  One  can  well  believe  that  not  a  single  un- 
necessary bullet  was  fired.  Not  to  believe  that  would 
be  to  saddle  those  in  authority  with  a  less  than  human 
baseness.  But  the  question  history  puts  is:  Who 
was  primarily  to  blame  for  the  circumstances  which 
led  up  to  the  tragic  necessity  of  the  firing  order? 

Posterity  has  unanimously  laid  the  blame  upon  the 
Administration  of  that  day,  and  assuredly  the  task 
of  whitewashing  "  The  Destroyers "  would  be  no 
light  or  pleasant  one.  But,  again,  we  must  remind 
ourselves  that  the  essence  of  the  British  Constitution 
has  granted  to  us  always,  for  a  century  past  at  least, 
as  good  a  Government  as  we  have  deserved.  "  The 
Destroyers  "  may  have  brought  shame  and  humilia- 
tion upon  England.  Unquestionably,  measures  and 
acts  of  theirs  produced  those  effects.  But  who  and 
what  produced  "  The  Destroyers  "  as  a  Government  ? 
The  only  possible  answer  to  that  is,  in  the  first  place, 
the  British  public;  in  the  second  place,  the  British 
people's  selfish  apathy  and  neglect,  where  national 
duty  and  responsibility  were  concerned,  and  blindly 
selfish  absorption,  in  the  matter  of  its  own  individual 
interests  and  pleasures. 

192 


THE    TRAGIC    WEEK 

One  hundred  and  thirty-two  men,  women,  and 
children  killed,  and  three  hundred  and  twenty-eight 
wounded;  the  Treasury  buildings  and  the  official 
residence  of  the  Prime  Minister  gutted ;  that  was  the 
casualty  list  of  the  "  Surrender  Riot "  at  Westmin- 
ster. But  the  figures  do  not  convey  a  tithe  of  the 
horror,  the  unforgettable  shame  and  horror,  of  the 
people's  attack  upon  the  Empire's  sanctuary.  The 
essence  of  the  tragedy  lay  in  their  demand  for  imme- 
diate and  unconditional  surrender ;  the  misery  of  it 
lay  in  "  The  Destroyers'  "  weak,  delayed,  terrified  re- 
sponse, followed  almost  immediately  by  the  order  to 
those  in  charge  of  the  firing  parties  —  an  order  flung 
hysterically  at  last,  the  very  articulation  of  panic. 

No  one  is  likely  to  question  Martin's  assertion  that 
Friday's  tragedy  at  Westminster  must  be  regarded 
—  "  not  alone  as  the  immediate  cause  of  Black  Satur- 
day's national  humiliation,  but  also  as  the  crucial 
phase,  the  pivot  upon  which  the  development  of  the 
whole  disastrous  week  turned."  But  the  Westminster 
Riot  at  least  had  the  saving  feature  of  unpremedita- 
tion.  It  was,  upon  the  one  side,  the  outcry  of  a 
wholly  undisciplined,  hungry,  and  panic-smitten  pub- 
lic ;  and,  upon  the  other  side,  the  irresponsible,  more 
than  half-hysterical  action  of  a  group  of  terrified  and 
incompetent  politicians.  These  men  had  been  swept 
into  great  positions,  which  they  were  totally  unfitted 
to  fill,  by  a  tidal  wave  of  reactionary  public  feeling, 
and  of  the  blind  selfishness  of  a  decadence  born  of 
long  freedom  from  any  form  of  national  discipline; 
of  liberties  too  easily  won  and  but  half-understood; 

193 


THE    MESSAGE 

of  superficial  education  as  to  rights,  and  absymal  ig- 
norance as  to  duties. 

But,  while  fully  admitting  the  soundness  of  Mar- 
tin's verdict,  for  my  part  I  feel  that  my  experiences 
during  that  week  left  me  with  memories  not  perhaps 
more  shocking,  but  certainly  more  humiliating  and 
disgraceful  to  England,  than  the  picture  burnt  into 
my  mind  by  the  Westminster  Riot.  I  will  mention 
two  of  these. 

By  Wednesday  a  large  proportion  of  the  rich  resi- 
dents of  Western  London  had  left  the  capital  to  take 
its  chances,  while  they  sought  the  security  of  coun- 
try homes,  more  particularly  in  the  southwestern 
counties.  Such  thoroughfares  as  Piccadilly,  Regent 
Street,  and  Bond  Street  were  no  longer  occupied  by 
well-dressed  people  with  plenty  of  money  to  spend. 
Their  usual  patrons  were  for  the  most  part  absent ; 
but,  particularly  at  night,  they  were  none  the  less 
very  freely  used  —  more  crowded,  indeed,  than  ever 
before.  The  really  poor,  the  desperately  hungry 
people,  had  no  concern  whatever  with  the  wrecking 
of  the  famous  German  restaurants  and  beer-halls. 
They  were  not  among  the  Regent  Street  and  Picca- 
dilly promenaders. 

The  Londoners  who  filled  these  streets  at  night  — 
the  people  who  sacked  the  Leicester  Square  hotel  and 
took  part  in  the  famous  orgie  which  Blackburn  de- 
scribes as  "  unequalled  in  England  since  the  days 
of  the  Plague,  or  in  Europe  since  the  French  Revolu- 
tion " ;  these  people  were  not  at  all  in  quest  of  food. 
They  were  engaged  upon  a  mad  pursuit  of  pleasure 
and  debauchery  and  drink.  "  Eat,  drink,  and  be 

194. 


THE     TRAGIC    WEEK 

vicious ;  but  above  all,  drink  and  be  vicious ;  for  this 
is  the  end  of  England !  "  That  was  their  watchword. 

I  have  no  wish  to  repeat  Blackburn's  terrible  stories 
of  rapine  and  bestiality,  of  the  frenzy  of  intoxication, 
and  the  blind  savagery  of  these  Saturnalias.  In  their 
dreadful  nakedness  they  stand  for  ever  in  the  pages 
of  his  great  book,  a  sinister  blur,  a  fiery  warning, 
writ  large  across  the  scroll  of  English  history.  I 
only  wish  to  say  that  scenes  I  actually  saw  with  my 
own  eyes  (one  episode  in  trying  to  check  the  horror 
of  which  I  lost  two  fingers  and  much  blood),  prove 
beyond  all  question  to  me  that,  even  in  its  most  lurid 
and  revolting  passages,  Blackburn's  account  is  a  mere 
record  of  fact,  and  not  at  all,  as  some  apologists  have 
sought  to  show,  an  exaggerated  or  overheated  version 
of  these  lamentable  events. 

Regarded  as  an  indication  of  the  pass  we  had 
reached  at  this  period  of  our  decadence,  this  stage 
of  our  trial  by  fire,  the  conduct  of  the  crowds  in 
Western  London  during  those  dreadful  nights,  im- 
pressed me  more  forcibly  than  the  disaster  which 
Martin  considers  the  climax  and  pivot  of  the  week's 
tragedy. 

One  does  not  cheerfully  refer  to  these  things,  but, 
to  be  truthful,  I  must  mention  the  other  matter  which 
produced  upon  me,  personally,  the  greatest  sense  of 
horror  and  disgrace. 

Military  writers  have  described  for  us  most  fully 
the  circumstances  in  which  General  Lord  Wensley's 
command  was  cut  and  blown  to  pieces  in  the  Epping 
and  Romford  districts.  Authorities  are  agreed  that 
the  records  of  civilized  warfare  have  nothing  more 

195 


THE    MESSAGE 

horrible  to  tell  than  the  history  of  that  ghastly  butch- 
ery. As  a  slaughter,  there  was  nothing  exactly  like 
it  in  the  Russo-Japanese  war  —  for  we  know  that 
there  were  less  than  a  hundred  survivors  of  the  whole 
of  Lord  Wensley's  command.  But  those  who 
mourned  the  loss  of  these  brave  men  had  a  consola- 
tion of  which  nothing  could  rob  them;  the  consola- 
tion which  is  graven  in  stone  upon  the  Epping  monu- 
ment; a  consolation  preserved  as  well  in  German  as 
in  English  history.  Germany  may  truthfully  say  of 
the  Epping  shambles  that  no  quarter  was  given  that 
day.  England  may  say,  with  what  pride  she  may, 
that  none  was  asked.  The  last  British  soldier  slaugh- 
tered in  the  Epping  trenches  had  no  white  flag  in  his 
hand,  but  a  broken  bayonet,  and,  under  his  knee,  the 
Colours  of  his  regiment. 

The  British  soldiers  in  those  blood-soaked  trenches 
were  badly  armed,  less  than  half-trained,  under- 
officered,  and  of  a  low  physical  standard.  But  these 
lamentable  facts  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  their 
slaughter.  There  were  but  seven  thousand  of  them, 
while  the  German  force  has  been  variously  estimated 
at  between  seventy  thousand  and  one  hundred  thou- 
sand horse  and  foot,  besides  artillery.  One  need  not 
stop  to  question  who  should  bear  the  blame  for  the 
half -trained,  vilely  equipped  condition  of  these  heroic 
victims.  The  far  greater  question,  to  which  the  only 
answer  can  be  a  sad  silence  of  remorse  and  bitter 
humiliation,  bears  upon  the  awful  needlessness  of 
their  sacrifice. 

The  circumstances  have  been  described  in  fullest 
detail  from  authentic  records.  The  stark  fact  which 

196 


THE    TRAGIC    WEEK 

stands  out  before  the  average  non-expert  observer  is 
that  Lord  Wensley  was  definitely  promised  reinforce- 
ments to  the  number  of  twenty  thousand  horse  and 
foot;  that  after  the  Westminster  Riot  not  a  single 
man  or  horse  reached  him ;  and  he  was  never  informed 
of  the  Government's  forced  decision  to  surrender. 

And  thus  those  half-trained  boys  and  men  laid 
down  their  lives  for  England  within  a  dozen  miles  of 
Westminster,  almost  twelve  hours  after  a  weak-kneed, 
panic-stricken  Cabinet  had  passed  its  word  to  the 
people  that  England  would  surrender. 

That,  to  my  thinking,  was  the  most  burning  feature 
of  our  disgrace ;  that,  as  an  indication  of  our  parlous 
estate,  is  more  terrible  than  Martin's  "  pivot  "  of  the 
tragic  week. 


197 


XX 


BLACK    SATURDAY 

Milton!  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour: 
England  hath  need  of  thee:  she  is  a  fen 
Of  stagnant  waters:  altar,  sword,  and  pen, 
Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 
Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 
Of  inward  happiness.    We  are  selfish  men. 

WORDSWOBTH. 

IN  the  afternoon  of  Black  Saturday,  General  von 
Fiichter,  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  German 
Army  in  England,  took  up  his  quarters,  with  his  staff, 
in  the  residence  of  the  German  Ambassador  to  the 
Court  of  St.  James  in  Carlton  House  Terrace,  and, 
so  men  said,  enjoyed  the  first  sleep  he  had  had  for  a 
week.  (The  German  Ambassador  had  handed  in  his 
credentials,  and  been  escorted  out  of  England  on  the 
previous  Monday.) 

Throughout  the  small  hours  of  Saturday  morning 
I  was  at  work  near  Romford  as  one  of  the  volunteer 
bearers  attached  to  Constance  Grey's  nursing  corps. 
That  is  one  reason  why  the  memory  of  the  north  of 
London  massacre  will  never  leave  me.  One  may  as- 
sume that  the  German  Army  had  no  wish  to  kill 
nurses,  but,  as  evidence  of  the  terrible  character  of 
the  onslaught  on  the  poor  defences  of  London,  I  may 
recall  the  fact  that  three  of  our  portable  nursing 

198 


BLACK    SATURDAY 

shelters  were  blown  to  pieces ;  while  of  Constance 
Grey's  nurses  alone  five  were  killed  and  fourteen  were 
badly  wounded. 

Myself,  I  had  much  to  be  thankful  for,  my  only 
wound  being  the  ploughing  of  a  little  furrow  over 
the  biceps  of  my  right  arm  by  a  bullet  that  passed 
out  through  the  back  of  my  coat.  But  a  circum- 
stance for  which  my  gratitude  was  more  deeply 
moved  was  the  fact  that  Constance  Grey,  despite  a 
number  of  wonderfully  narrow  escapes,  was  entirely 
uninjured. 

The  actual  entry  of  General  von  Fiichter  and  his 
troops  into  London  has  been  so  often  described  that 
nothing  remains  for  me  to  say  about  that.  Also,  I 
am  unable  to  speak  as  an  eye  witness,  since  Constance 
Grey  and  myself  were  among  those  who  returned  to 
London,  in  the  rear  of  the  German  troops,  with  the 
ambulances.  The  enemy's  line  of  communications 
stretched  now  from  the  Wash  to  London,  and  between 
Brentwood  and  London  there  were  more  Germans 
than  English.  I  believe  the  actual  number  of  troops 
which  entered  London  behind  General  von  Fiichter  was 
under  forty-eight  thousand ;  but  to  the  northward, 
northeast,  and  northwest  the  huge  force  which  really 
invested  the  capital  was  spread  in  careful  formation, 
and  amply  provided  with  heavy  artillery,  then  trained 
upon  central  London  from  all  such  points  as  the 
Hampstead  heights. 

Although  a  formal  note  of  surrender  had  been  con- 
veyed to  General  von  Fiichter  at  Romford,  after  the 
annihilation  of  our  entrenched  troops,  occasional  shots 
were  fired  upon  the  enemy  as  they  entered  London. 

199 


THE    MESSAGE 

Indeed,  in  the  Whitechapel  Road,  one  of  the  Gen- 
eral's aides-de-camp,  riding  within  a  few  yards  of  his 
chief,  was  killed  by  a  shot  from  the  upper  windows 
of  a  provision  shop.  But  the  German  reprisals  were 
sharp.  It  is  said  that  fifty-seven  lives  paid  the  pen- 
alty for  the  shooting  of  that  aide-de-camp.  Several 
streets  of  houses  in  northeast  London  were  burned. 

By  this  time  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  had  been 
notified  that  serious  results  would  accrue  if  any 
further  opposition  were  offered  to  the  German  ac- 
ceptance of  London's  surrender ;  and  proclamations 
to  that  effect  were  posted  everywhere.  But  the  great 
bulk  of  London's  inhabitants  were  completely  cowed 
by  hunger  and  terror.  Practically,  it  may  be  said 
that,  throughout,  the  only  resistance  offered  to  the 
Army  of  the  invaders  was  that  which  ended  so  tragi- 
cally in  the  trenches  beyond  Epping  and  Romford, 
with  the  equally  tragical  defence  of  Colchester,  and 
some  of  the  northern  towns  captured  by  the  eighth 
German  Army  Corps. 

In  London  the  people's  demand  from  the  first  had 
been  for  unconditional  surrender.  It  was  this  demand 
which  had  culminated  in  the  Westminster  Riot.  The 
populace  was  so  entirely  undisciplined,  so  completely 
lacking  in  the  sort  of  training  which  makes  for  self- 
restraint,  that  even  if  the  Government  had  been 
possessed  of  an  efficient  striking  force  for  defensive 
purposes,  the  public  would  not  have  permitted  its 
proper  utilization.  The  roar  of  German  artillery 
during  Friday  night  and  Saturday  morning,  with  the 
news  of  the  awful  massacre  in  the  northern  entrench- 


200 


BLACK    SATURDAY 

ments,  had  combined  to  extinguish  the  last  vestige  of 
desire  for  resistance  which  remained  in  London. 

Almost  all  the  people  with  money  had  left  the  cap- 
ital. Those  remaining  —  the  poor,  the  refugees  from 
northward,  irresponsibles,  people  without  a  stake  of 
any  kind ;  these  desired  but  the  one  thing :  food  and 
safety.  The  German  Commander-in-Chief  was  wise. 
He  knew  that  if  time  had  been  allowed,  resistance 
would  have  been  organized,  even  though  the  British 
regular  Army  had,  by  continuous  reductions  in  the 
name  of  "  economy,"  practically  ceased  to  exist  as  a 
striking  force.  And  therefore  time  was  the  one  thing 
he  had  been  most  determined  to  deny  England;. 

It  is  said  that  fatigue  killed  more  German  soldiers 
than  fell  to  British  bullets;  and  the  fact  may  well 
be  believed  when  we  consider  the  herculean  task  Gen- 
eral von  Fiichter  had  accomplished  in  one  week.  His 
plan  of  campaign  was  to  strike  his  hardest,  and  to 
keep  on  striking  his  hardest,  without  pause,  till  he 
had  the  British  Government  on  its  knees  before  him ; 
till  he  had  the  British  public  —  maddened  by  sudden 
fear,  and  the  panic  which  blows  of  this  sort  must 
bring  to  a  people  with  no  defensive  organization, 
and  no  disciplinary  training  —  cowed  and  crying  for 
quarter. 

The  German  Commander  has  been  called  inhuman, 
a  monster,  a  creature  without  bowels.  All  that  is 
really  of  small  importance.  He  was  a  soldier  who 
carried  out  orders.  His  orders  were  ruthless  orders. 
The  instrument  he  used  was  a  very  perfect  one.  He 
carried  out  his  orders  with  the  utmost  precision  and 
thoroughness ;  and  his  method  was  the  surest,  quick- 

201 


THE    MESSAGE 

est,  and,  perhaps,  the  only  way  of  taking  possession 
of  England. 

At  noon  precisely,  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  was 
brought  before  the  German  Commander-in-Chief  in 
the  audience  chamber  of  the  Mansion  House,  and 
formally  placed  under  arrest.  A  triple  cordon  of 
sentries  and  two  machine-gun  parties  were  placed  in 
charge  of  the  Bank  of  England,  and  quarters  were 
allotted  for  two  German  regiments  in  the  immediate 
vicinity.  Two  machine-guns  were  brought  into  posi- 
tion in  front  of  the  Stock  Exchange,  and  all  avenues 
leading  from  the  heart  of  the  City  were  occupied  by 
mixed  details  of  cavalry  and  infantry,  each  party 
having  one  machine-gun. 

My  acquaintance,  Wardle,  of  the  Sunday  News, 
was  in  the  audience  chamber  of  the  Mansion  House 
at  this  time,  and  he  says  that  he  never  saw  a  man  look 
more  exhausted  than  General  von  Fiichter,  who,  ac- 
cording to  report,  had  not  had  an  hour's  sleep  during 
the  week.  But  though  the  General's  cheeks  were 
sunken,  his  chin  unshaven,  and  his  eyes  blood-red,  his 
demeanour  was  that  of  an  iron  man  —  stern,  brusque, 
taciturn,  erect,  and  singularly  immobile. 

Food  was  served  to  this  man  of  blood  and  iron  in 
the  Mansion  House,  while  the  Lord  Mayor's  secretary 
proceeded  to  Whitehall,  with  word  to  the  effect  that 
the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  German  forces  in 
England  awaited  the  sword  and  formal  surrender  of 
the  British  Commander,  before  proceeding  to  take 
up  quarters  in  which  he  would  deal  with  peace  nego- 
tiations. 

Forster's  great  work,  "  The  Surrender,"  gives  the 


BLACK    SATURDAY 

finest  description  we  have  of  the  scene  that  followed. 
The  Field  Marshal  in  command  of  the  British  forces 
had  that  morning  been  sent  for  by  a  Cabinet  Council 
then  being  held  in  the  Prime  Minister's  room  at  the 
House  of  Commons.  With  nine  members  of  his  staff, 
the  white-haired  Field  Marshal  rode  slowly  into  the 
City,  in  full  uniform.  His  instructions  were  for  un- 
conditional surrender,  and  a  request  for  the  immedi- 
ate consideration  of  the  details  of  peace  negotia- 
tions. 

The  Field  Marshal  had  once  been  the  most  popular 
idol  of  the  British  people,  whom  he  had  served  nobly 
in  a  hundred  fights.  Of  late  years  he  himself  had 
been  as  completely  disregarded,  as  the  grave  warn- 
ings, the  earnest  appeals,  which  he  had  bravely  con- 
tinued to  urge  upon  a  neglectful  people.  The  very 
Government  which  now  despatched  him  upon  the  hard- 
est task  of  his  whole  career,  the  tendering  of  his 
sword  to  his  country's  enemy,  had  for  long  treated 
him  with  cold  disfavour.  The  general  public,  in  its 
anti-national  madness,  had  sneered  at  this  great  little 
man,  their  one-time  hero,  as  a  Jingo  crank. 

(As  an  instance  of  the  lengths  to  which  the  public 
madness  went  in  this  matter,  the  curious  will  find  in 
the  British  Museum  copies  of  at  least  one  farcical 
work  of  fiction  written  and  published  with  consider- 
able success,  as  burlesques  of  that  very  invasion  which 
had  now  occurred,  of  the  possibility  of  which  this 
loyal  servant  in  particular  had  so  earnestly  and  so 
unavailingly  warned  his  countrymen.) 

Now,  the  blow  he  had  so  often  foreshadowed  had 
fallen ;  the  capital  of  the  British  Empire  was  actually 

203 


THE    MESSAGE 

in  possession   of  an  enemy ;    and  the  British  leader 
knew  himself  for  a  Commander  without  an  Army. 

He  had  long  since  given  his  only  son  to  the  cause 
of  Britain's  defence.  The  whole  of  his  own  strenuous 
life  had  been  devoted  to  the  same  cause.  His  declin- 
ing years  had  known  no  ease  by  reason  of  his  unceas- 
ing and  thankless  striving  to  awaken  his  fellow  coun- 
trymen to  a  sense  of  their  military  responsibilities. 
Now  he  felt  that  the  end  of  all  things  had  come  for 
him,  in  the  carrying  out  of  an  order  which  snapped 
his  life's  work  in  two,  and  flung  it  down  at  the  feet  of 
England's  almost  unopposed  conqueror. 

The  understanding  Englishman  has  forgiven  Gen- 
eral von  Fiichter  much,  by  virtue  of  his  treatment  of 
the  noble  old  soldier,  who  with  tear-blinded  eyes  and 
twitching  lips  tendered  him  the  surrender  of  the 
almost  non-existent  British  Army.  No  man  ever 
heard  a  speech  from  General  von  Fiichter,  but  the 
remark  with  which  he  returned  our  Field  Marshal's 
sword  to  him  will  never  be  forgotten  in  England.  He 
said,  in  rather  laboured  English,  with  a  stiff,  low  bow : 

"  Keep  it,  my  lord.  If  your  countrymen  had  not 
forgotten  how  to  recognize  a  great  soldier,  I  could 
never  have  demanded  it  of  you." 

And  the  man  of  iron  saluted  the  heart-broken 
Chief  of  the  shattered  British  Army. 

We  prefer  not  to  believe  the  report  that  this,  the 
German  Commander's  one  act  of  gentleness  and  mag- 
nanimity in  England,  was  subsequently  paid  for  by 
the  loss  of  a  certain  Imperial  decoration.  But,  if  the 
story  was  true,  then  the  decoration  it  concerned  was 
well  lost. 

204 


BLACK    SATURDAY 

It  was  a  grim,  war-stained  procession  that  followed 
General  von  Fiichter  when,  between  two  and  three 
o'clock,  he  rode  with  his  staff  by  way  of  Ludgate 
Hill  and  the  Strand  to  Carlton  House  Terrace.  But 
the  cavalry  rode  with  drawn  sabres,  the  infantry 
marched  with  fixed  bayonets,  and,  though  weariness 
showed  in  every  line  of  the  men's  faces,  there  was  as 
yet  no  sign  of  relaxed  tension. 

Throughout  that  evening  and  night  the  baggage 
wagons  rumbled  through  London,  without  cessation, 
to  the  two  main  western  encampments  in  Hyde  Park. 
The  whole  of  Pall  Mall  and  Park  Lane  were  occupied 
by  German  officers  that  night,  few  of  the  usual  occu- 
pants of  the  clubs  in  the  one  thoroughfare,  or  the 
residences  in  the  other,  being  then  in  London. 

By  four  o'clock  General  von  Fiichter's  terms  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  Government  which  had  now  com- 
pleted its  earning  of  the  title  of  "  The  Destroyers." 
The  Chief  Commissioner  of  Police  and  the  principal 
municipal  authorities  of  greater  London  had  all  been 
examined  during  the  day  at  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  were  unanimous  in  their  verdict  that  any  delay  in 
the  arrangement  of  peace  and  the  resumption  of 
trade,  ashore  and  afloat,  could  mean  only  revolution. 
Whole  streets  of  shops  had  been  sacked  and  looted 
already  by  hungry  mobs,  who  gave  no  thought  to  the 
invasion  or  to  any  other  matter  than  the  question  of 
food  supply.  A  great,  lowering  crowd  of  hungry 
men  and  women  occupied  Westminster  Bridge  and  the 
southern  embankment  (no  German  soldiers  had  been 
seen  south  of  the  Thames  )  waiting  for  the  news  of  the 
promised  conclusion  of  peace  terms. 

205 


THE    MESSAGE 

There  is  not  wanting  evidence  that  certain  mem- 
bers of  the  Government  had  already  bitterly  repented 
of  their  suicidal  retrenchment  and  anti-defensive  atti- 
tude in  the  past.  But  repentance  had  come  too  late. 
The  Government  stood  between  a  hungry,  terrified 
populace  demanding  peace  and  food,  and  a  mighty 
and  victorious  army  whose  commander,  acting  upon 
the  orders  of  his  Government,  offered  peace  at  a  ter- 
rible price,  or  the  absolute  destruction  of  London. 
For  General  von  Fiichter's  brief  memorandum  of 
terms  alluded  threateningly  to  the  fact  that  his  heavy 
artillery  was  so  placed  that  he  could  blow  the  House 
of  Commons  into  the  river  in  an  hour. 

At  six  o'clock  the  German  terms  were  accepted,  a 
provisional  declaration  of  peace  was  signed,  and 
public  proclamations  to  that  effect,  embodying  refer- 
ence to  the  deadly  perils  which  would  be  incurred  by 
those  taking  part  in  any  kind  of  street  disorder,  were 
issued  to  the  public.  As  to  the  nature  of  the  German 
terms,  it  must  be  admitted  that  they  were  as  pitiless 
as  the  German  tactics  throughout  the  invasion,  and 
as  surely  designed  to  accomplish  their  end  and  object. 
Berlin  had  not  forgotten  the  wonderful  recuperative 
powers  which  enabled  France  to  rise  so  swiftly  from 
out  of  the  ashes  of  1870.  Britain  was  to  be  far  more 
effectually  crippled. 

The  money  indemnity  demanded  by  General  von 
Fiichter  was  the  largest  ever  known:  one  thousand 
million  pounds  sterling.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  enemy  already  held  the  Bank  of  England. 
One  hundred  millions,  or  securities  representing  that 
amount,  were  to  be  handed  over  within  twenty-four 

206 


BLACK   SATURDAY 

hours.  The  remaining  nine  hundred  millions  were  to 
be  paid  in  nine  annual  instalments  of  one  hundred 
millions  each,  the  first  of  which  must  be  paid  within 
three  months.  Until  the  last  payment  was  made, 
German  troops  were  to  occupy  Glasgow,  Cardiff, 
Portsmouth,  Devonport,  Chatham,  Yarmouth,  Har- 
wich, Hull,  and  Newcastle.  The  Transvaal  was  to  be 
ceded  to  the  Boers  under  a  German  Protectorate. 
Britain  was  to  withdraw  all  pretensions  regarding 
Egypt  and  Morocco,  and  to  cede  to  Germany,  Gibral- 
tar, Malta,  Ceylon,  and  British  West  Africa. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  quote  the  few  further 
details  of  the  most  exacting  demands  a  victor  ever 
made  upon  a  defeated  enemy.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that,  in  the  disastrous  circumstances  they  had  been  so 
largely  instrumental  in  bringing  about,  "  The  Des- 
troyers "  had  no  choice,  no  alternative  from  their 
acceptance  of  these  crushing  terms. 

And  thus  it  was  that  —  not  at  the  end  of  a  long 
and  hard-fought  war,  as  the  result  of  vast  misfor- 
tunes or  overwhelming  valour  on  the  enemy's  side,  but 
simply  as  the  result  of  the  condition  of  utter  and 
lamentable  defencelessness  into  which  a  truckling 
Government  and  an  undisciplined,  blindly  selfish  peo- 
ple had  allowed  England  to  lapse  —  the  greatest, 
wealthiest  Power  in  civilization  was  brought  to  its 
knees  in  the  incredibly  short  space  of  one  week,  by 
the  sudden  but  scientifically  devised  onslaught  of  a 
single  ambitious  nation,  ruled  by  a  monarch  whose 
lack  of  scruples  was  more  than  balanced  by  his 
strength  of  purpose. 

SOT 


XXI 


ENGLAND    ASLEEP 


Evil  springs  up,  and  flowers,  and  bears  no  seed, 
And  feeds  the  green  earth  with  its  swift  decay, 
Leaving  it  richer  for  the  growth  of  truth.  —  LOWELL. 

ENERAL  VON  FUCHTER  and  his  splendidly 
V_T  trained  troops  were  not  the  only  people  in 
England  for  whom  the  mere  fatigue  of  that  week  was 
something  not  easily  to  be  forgotten.  My  impression 
of  its  last  three  days  is  that  they  brought  no  period 
of  rest  for  any  one.  I  know  that  there  were  as  many 
people  in  the  streets  by  night  as  by  day.  The  act  of 
going  within  doors  or  sitting  down,  seemed  in  some 
way  to  be  a  kind  of  cowardice,  a  species  of  shirking, 
or  disloyalty. 

I  remember  Constance  Grey  assuring  me  that  she 
had  lain  down  for  an  hour  on  Thursday.  I  can  say 
with  certainty  that  we  were  both  of  us  on  our  feet 
from  that  time  until  after  the  terms  of  the  surrender 
were  made  known  on  Saturday  evening.  I  can  also 
say  that  no  thought  of  this  matter  of  physical  weari- 
ness occurred  to  me  until  that  period  of  Saturday 
evening  —  soon  after  seven  o'clock  it  was  —  when 
the  proclamations  were  posted  up  in  Whitehall,  and 
the  special  issues  of  the  newspapers  containing  the 
peace  announcements  began  to  be  hawked. 

208 


ENGLAND   ASLEEP 

An  issue  of  the  Standard,  a  single  sheet,  with  broad 
black  borders,  was  the  first  press  announcement  to 
reach  the  public;  and  it  contained  a  grave,  closely 
reasoned  address  from  the  most  famous  statesman  of 
the  Opposition,  urging  upon  the  public  the  need  vital 
of  exercising  the  utmost  cautiousness  and  self-re- 
straint. 

"  England  has  been  stricken  to  the  earth,"  said  this 
dignified  statement.  "  Her  condition  is  critical.  If 
the  injury  sustained  is  not  to  prove  mortal,  the 
utmost  circumspection  is  required  at  this  moment. 
The  immediate  duty  of  every  loyal  subject  is  quietly 
to  concentrate  his  energies  for  the  time  upon  the 
restoration  of  normal  conditions.  In  that  way  only 
can  our  suffering  country  be  given  that  breathing 
space  which  is  the  first  step  toward  recuperation. 
For  my  part,  I  can  conceive  of  no  better,  quicker 
method  for  the  individual  of  serving  this  end  than  for 
him  to  make  the  speediest  possible  return  to  the  pur- 
suit of  his  ordinary  avocation  in  life.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that,  bearing  in  mind  our  urgent  need,  all  em- 
ployers of  labour  will  do  their  utmost  to  provide 
immediate  occupation  for  their  work-people.  It  is 
not  in  the  tragic  catastrophe  of  the  past  week,  but  in 
the  ordeal  of  this  moment,  of  the  coming  days,  that 
the  real  test  of  England's  endurance  lies.  Never  be- 
fore was  her  need  so  great ;  never  before  has  Nelson's 
demand  had  so  real  and  intimate  a  message  for  each 
and  every  one  of  us.  I  pray  God  the  response  may 
ring  true.  '  England  expects  that  every  man  will 
do  his  duty ! '  " 

I  must  not  omit  my  tribute  to  those  responsible  for 
209 


the  salient  fact  that  this  important  issue  of  the  jour- 
nal whose  unwavering  Imperialism  had  been  scoffed 
at  in  the  mad  times  before  the  Invasion,  was  not  sold, 
but  distributed.  Employment  was  found  for  hun- 
dreds of  hungry  men,  women,  and  children  in  its  free 
distribution;  their  wage  being  the  thing  they  most 
desired:  bread,  with  soup,  which,  as  I  learned  that 
night,  was  prepared  in  huge  coppers  in  the  foundry 
of  the  printing  works. 

I  was  with  Constance  Grey  in  Trafalgar  Square 
when  the  news  of  the  accepted  terms  of  peace  reached 
us.  We  had  just  secured  admission  into  Charing 
Cross  Hospital  —  not  without  considerable  difficulty, 
for  its  wards  were  crowded  —  for  two  wounded 
nurses  from  Epping.  Together  we  read  the  news, 
and  when  the  end  was  reached  it  seemed  to  me  that 
the  light  of  life  and  energy  passed  suddenly  out  of 
my  companion.  She  seemed  to  suffer  some  bodily 
change  and  loss,  to  be  bereft  of  her  spring  and  erect- 
ness. 

"  Ah,  well,"  she  said,  "  I  am  very  tired,  Dick ; 
and,  do  you  know,  it  occurs  to  me  I  have  had  nothing 
to  eat  since  yesterday  afternoon.  I  wonder  can  we 
get  away  from  these  men,  anywhere?  " 

The  streets  between  Victoria  and  Hyde  Park  were 
lined  by  German  cavalry  men,  who  sat  motionless  on 
their  chargers,  erect  and  soldierly,  but,  in  many  cases, 
fast  asleep. 

We  began  to  walk  eastward,  looking  for  some  place 
in  which  we  could  rest  and  eat.  But  every  place 
seemed  to  be  closed. 


210 


ENGLAND    ASLEEP 

"  How  long  have  you  been  on  your  feet?  "  said 
Constance,  as  we  passed  the  Law  Courts. 

"  Only  since  Thursday  evening,"  I  said.  "  I  had 
a  long  rest  in  that  cart,  you  remember  —  the  one  I 
brought  the  lint  and  bandages  in." 

Just  then  we  passed  a  tailor's  shop-window,  and, 
in  a  long,  narrow  strip  of  mirror  I  caught  a  full- 
length  reflection  of  myself.  I  positively  turned 
swiftly  to  see  who  could  have  cast  that  reflection. 
Four  days  without  shaving  and  without  a  change  of 
collar ;  two  days  without  even  washing  my  hands  or 
face ;  four  days  without  undressing,  and  eight  hours' 
work  beside  the  North  London  entrenchments  — 
these  experiences  had  made  a  wild-looking  savage  of 
me,  and,  until  that  moment,  I  had  never  thought  of 
my  appearance. 

Smoke,  earth,  and  blood  had  worked  their  will  upon 
me.  My  left  hand,  from  which  two  fingers  were  miss- 
ing, was  swathed  in  blackened  bandages.  My  right 
coat-sleeve  had  been  cut  off  by  a  good-natured  fellow 
who  had  bandaged  the  flesh  wound  in  my  arm  to  stop 
its  bleeding.  My  eyes  glinted  dully  in  a  black  face, 
with  curious  white  fringes  round  them,  where  their 
moisture  had  penetrated  my  skin  of  smoked  dirt.  And 
here  was  I  walking  beside  Constance  Grey ! 

Then  I  realized,  for  the  first  time,  that  Constance 
herself  bore  many  traces  of  these  last  few  terrible 
days.  In  some  mysterious  fashion  her  face  and 
collar  seemed  to  have  escaped  scot  free ;  but  her  dress 
was  torn,  ragged,  and  stained ;  and  the  intense  weari- 
ness of  her  expression  was  something  I  found  it  hard 
to  bear. 

211 


THE    MESSAGE 

Just  then  we  met  Wardle  of  the  Sunday  News,  and 
he  told  us  of  the  bread  and  soup  distribution  in  the 
Standard  office.  Something  warned  me  that  Con- 
stance had  reached  the  limit  of  her  endurance,  and, 
in  another  moment,  she  had  reeled  against  me  and 
almost  fallen.  I  took  her  in  my  arms,  and  Wardle 
walked  beside  me,  up  a  flight  of  stairs  and  into  the 
office  of  the  great  newspaper.  There  I  walked  into 
the  first  room  I  saw  —  the  sanctum  of  some  mana- 
gerial bashaw,  for  aught  I  knew  —  and  placed  Con- 
stance comfortably  in  a  huge  easy  chair  of  green 
leather. 

Wardle  brought  some  water,  for  Constance  was  in 
a  fainting  state  still;  but  I  hurried  him  off  again  to 
look  for  bread  and  soup.  Meantime  I  lowered  Con- 
stance to  the  floor,  having  just  remembered  that  in 
such  a  case  the  head  should  be  kept  low.  Her  face 
was  positively  deathly  —  lips,  cheeks,  all  alike  gray- 
white,  save  for  the  purple  hollows  under  both  eyes. 
One  moment  I  was  taking  stock  of  these  things,  as 
a  doctor  might;  the  next  I  was  on  my  knees  and 
kissing  the  nerveless  hand  at  her  side,  all  worn  and 
bruised  and  stained  as  it  was  from  her  ceaseless  striv- 
ings of  the  past  week.  I  knew  then  that,  for  me, 
though  I  should  live  a  hundred  years  and  Constance 
should  never  deign  to  speak  to  me  again,  there  was 
but  one  woman  in  the  world. 

I  am  afraid  Wardle  found  me  at  the  same  employ ; 
but,  though  I  remember  vaguely  resenting  his  fresh 
linen  and  normally  smart  appearance,  he  was  a  good 
fellow,  and  knew  when  to  seem  blind.  All  he  said  was : 

"Here's  the  soup!" 


"I  WAS  ON  MY  KNEES  AND  KISSING  THE  NERVELESS  HAXD: 


ENGLAND    ASLEEP      . 

He  had  brought  a  small  washhand  basin  full  to  the 
brim,  and  a  loaf  of  warm,  new  bread.  As  the  steam 
of  the  hot  soup  reached  me,  I  realized  that  I  was  a 
very  hungry  animal,  whatever  else  I  might  be  besides. 
It  may  have  been  the  steam  of  the  soup  that  rallied 
Constance.  I  know  that  within  two  minutes  I  was 
feeding  her  with  it  from  a  cracked  teacup.  It  is  a 
wonderful  thing  to  watch  the  effect  of  a  few  mouth- 
fuls  of  hot  soup  upon  an  exhausted  woman,  whose 
exhaustion  is  due  as  much  to  lack  of  food  as  need  of 
rest.  There  was  no  spoon,  but  the  teacup,  though 
cracked,  was  clean,  and  I  found  a  tumbler  in  a  luxu- 
rious little  cabinet  near  the  chair  one  felt  was  dedi- 
cated to  the  Fleet  Street  magnate  whose  room  we  had 
invaded.  A  tumbler  is  almost  as  convenient  to  drink 
soup  from  as  a  cup,  but  requires  more  careful  manip- 
ulation when  hot.  If  the  side  of  the  tumbler  becomes 
soupy,  it  can  easily  be  wiped  with  the  crumb  of  new 
bread. 

Wardle  seemed  to  be  as  sufficiently  nourished  as  he 
was  neatly  dressed ;  but  he  found  a  certain  vicarious 
pleasure,  I  think,  in  watching  Constance  and  myself 
at  the  bowl.  We  sat  on  the  Turkey  carpet,  and  used 
the  seat  of  the  green  chair  as  a  table  —  a  strange 
meal,  in  strange  surroundings ;  but  a  better  I  never 
had,  before  or  since.  There  was  a  physical  gratifica- 
tion, a  warmth  and  a  comfort  to  me,  in  watching  the 
colour  flowing  gradually  back  into  Constance's  face; 
a  singularly  beautiful  process  of  nature  I  thought  it. 
Presently  the  door  of  the  room  opened  with  a  jerk, 
and  a  tallish  man  wearing  a  silk  hat  looked  in. 

"  H'm !  "    he   said   brusquely.      "  Beg   pardon !  " 


THE    MESSAGE 

And  he  was  gone.  I  learned  afterwards  that  the 
room  belonged  to  him,  and  that  he  came  direct  from 
a  conference  of  newspaper  pundits  called  together  at 
Westminster  by  the  Home  Secretary.  I  do  not  know 
where  he  took  refuge,  but  as  for  us  we  went  on  with 
our  soup  and  bread  till  repletion  overtook  us,  as  it 
quickly  does  after  long  fasts,  and  renewed  strength 
brought  sighs  of  contentment. 

"  Wardle,"  I  remember  saying  to  my  journalistic 
friend,  with  absurd  earnestness,  "  have  you  anything 
to  smoke?  " 

"  I  haven't  a  thing  but  my  pipe,"  he  said.  "  But 
wait  a  moment !  There  used  to  be  —  yes.  Look 
here!" 

There  was  a  drawer  in  a  side-table  near  the  great 
writing-table,  and  one  division  of  it  was  half -full  of 
cigarettes,  the  other  of  Upman's  "  Torpedoes." 

"  I  will  repay  thee,"  I  murmured  irreverently,  as 
I  helped  myself  to  one  of  each,  and  lit  the  cigarette, 
having  obtained  permission  from  Constance.  It  was 
the  first  tobacco  I  had  tasted  for  forty-eight  hours, 
and  I  was  a  very  regular  smoker.  I  had  not  known 
my  need  till  then,  a  fact  which  will  tell  much  to 
smokers. 

"  And  now  ?  "  said  Constance.  Her  eyelids  were 
drooping  heavily. 

"  Now  I  am  going  to  take  you  straight  out  to 
South  Kensington,  and  you  are  going  to  rest." 

I  had  never  used  quite  that  tone  to  Constance 
before.  I  think,  till  now,  hers  had  been  the  guiding 
and  directing  part.  Yet  her  influence  had  never  been 
stronger  upon  me  than  at  that  moment. 


ENGLAND    ASLEEP 

"  Well,  of  course,  there  are  no  cabs  or  omnibuses," 
said  Wardle,  "  but  a  man  told  me  the  Underground 
was  running  trains  at  six  o'clock." 

We  had  a  long,  long  wait  at  Blackfriars'  station, 
but  a  train  came  eventually,  and  we  reached  the  flat 
in  South  Kensington  as  a  neighbouring  church  clock 
struck  ten.  The  journey  was  curious  and  impressive 
from  first  to  last.  Fleet  Street  had  been  very  much 
alive  still  when  we  left  it;  and  we  saw  long  files  of 
baggage  wagons  rumbling  along  between  Prussian 
lancers.  But  Blackfriars  was  deserted,  the  ticket 
collector  slept  soundly  on  his  box;  the  streets  in 
South  Kensington  were  silent  as  the  grave. 

London  slept  that  night  for  the  first  time  in  a  week. 
I  learned  afterwards  how  the  long  lines  of  German 
sentries  in  Pall  Mall,  Park  Lane,  and  elsewhere  slept 
solidly  at  their  posts ;  how  the  Metropolitan  police 
slept  on  their  beats;  how  thousands  of  men,  women, 
and  children  slept  in  the  streets  of  South  London, 
whither  they  had  fled  panic-stricken  that  morning. 
Conquerors  and  conquered  together,  the  whole  vast 
city  slept  that  night  as  never  perhaps  before  or  since. 
After  a  week  of  terror,  of  effort,  of  despair,  and  of 
debauchery,  the  sorely  stricken  capital  of  the  British 
Empire  lay  that  night  like  a  city  of  the  dead.  Eng- 
land and  her  invaders  were  worn  out. 

At  the  flat  we  found  Mrs.  Van  Homrey  placidly 
knitting. 

"  Well,  young  folk,"  she  said  cheerily ;  "  I've  had 
all  the  news,  and  there's  nothing  to  be  said ;  and  — 
there's  bath  and  bed  waiting  for  you,  Conny.  I  shall 
bring  you  something  hot  in  your  room." 

£15 


THE    MESSAGE 

Ah,  the  kindly  comfort  of  that  motherly  soul's 
words !  It  was  but  a  few  hours  since  her  "  Conny  " 
had  stood  by  my  side  on  ground  that  was  literally 
blood-soaked.  Since  the  previous  night  we  had  both 
seen  Death  in  his  most  terrible  guise;  Death  swing- 
ing his  dripping  scythe  through  scores  of  lives  at  a 
stroke.  We  had  been  in  England's  riven  heart 
throughout  the  day  of  England's  bitterest  humilia- 
tion ;  and  Mrs.  Van  Homrey  had  bed  and  bath  wait- 
ing, with  "  something  hot  "  for  Constance  to  take  in 
her  room. 

"  But,  Aunty,  if  you  could  have  seen  — 

"  Dear  child,  I  know  it  all."  She  patted  her  niece's 
shoulder,  and  I  noticed  the  rings  and  the  shiny  soft- 
ness of  her  fingers.  She  saw  at  a  glance  — 
indeed,  had  seen  beforehand,  in  anticipation  —  the 
wrought-up,  exhausted  condition  Constance  had 
reached.  "  I  know  it  all,  dear,"  she  said  soothingly. 
"  But  the  time  has  come  for  rest  now.  Nothing  else 
is  any  good  till  that  is  done  with.  Come,  child.  God 
will  send  better  days  for  England.  First,  we  must 
rest." 

So  Constance  turned  to  leave  the  room. 

"  And  you  ?  "   she  said  to  me. 

"  I  will  see  to  him.  You  run  along,  my  dear," 
said  her  aunt.  So  Constance  took  my  hand. 

"  Good  night,  Dick.  You  have  been  very  good  and 
kind,  and  —  patient.  Good  night !  " 

There  was  no  spare  bedroom  in  that  little  flat,  but 
the  dear  old  lady  had  actually  made  up  a  bed  for  me 
on  a  couch  in  the  drawing-room,  and  before  she  re- 
tired for  the  night  she  made  me  free  of  the  bathroom, 

216 


and  supplied  me  with  towels  and  such  like  matters, 
and  gave  me  cake  and  cocoa ;  a  delicious  repast  I 
thought  it.  And  so,  while  crushed  and  beaten  Lon- 
don lay  sleeping  off  its  exhaustion,  I  slept  under  Con- 
stance Grey's  roof,  full  of  gratitude,  and  of  a  kind 
of  new  hope  and  gladness,  very  foreign,  one  would 
have  said,  to  my  gruesome  experiences  of  the  past 
forty-eight  hours. 

England,  the  old  victorious  island  kingdom,  be- 
queathed to  us  by  Raleigh,  Drake,  Nelson ;  the  nine- 
teenth-century England  of  triumphant  commercial- 
ism; England  till  then  inviolate  for  a  thousand 
years ;  rich  and  powerful  beyond  all  other  lands ; 
broken  now  under  the  invader's  heel  —  that  ancient 
England  slept. 


217 


PART  n 

THE    AWAKENING 

Exoriare  aliquis  de  nostris  ex  ossibus  ultor.  —  VIRGIL. 


THE    FIRST    DAYS 

The  river  glideth  at  his  own  sweet  will. 
Dear  God!  the  very  houses  seem  asleep  ; 
And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still! 

Without  Thee,  what  is  all  the  morning's  wealth  ? 
Come,  blessed  barrier  between  day  and  day, 
Dear  Mother  of  fresh  thoughts  and  joyous  health! 

WORDSWORTH. 

T  T  is  safe  to  say  that  England's  exhausted  sleep  on 
-*-  the  night  of  Black  Saturday  marked  the  end  of 
an  era  in  British  history.  It  was  followed  by  a  curi- 
ous, quiescent  half-consciousness  during  Sunday. 
For  the  greater  part  of  that  day  I  should  suppose 
that  more  than  half  London's  populace  continued 
its  sleep. 

One  of  the  first  things  I  realized  after  Monday 
morning's  awakening  in  my  Bloomsbury  lodging  was 
that  I  must  find  wages  and  work  speedily,  since  I 
possessed  no  more  than  a  very  few  pounds.  As  a  fact, 
upon  that  and  several  subsequent  days  I  found  plenty 
of  work,  if  nothing  noticeable  in  the  way  of  wages. 
I  was  second  in  command  of  one  of  the  food  and 
labour  bureaux  which  Constance  Grey  helped  to  or- 
ganize, and  all  the  workers  in  these  bureaux  were 
volunteers. 


THE    MESSAGE 

Another  of  my  first  impressions  after  the  crisis  was 
a  sense  of  my  actual  remoteness,  in  normal  circum- 
stances, from  Constance.  Her  father  had  left  Con- 
stance a  quite  sufficient  income.  Mrs.  Van  Homrey 
was  in  her  own  right  comfortably  well-to-do.  But, 
despite  the  exiguous  nature  of  my  own  resources,  it 
was  not  the  money  question  which  impressed  me  most 
in  this  connection,  but  rather  the  fact  that,  while  my 
only  acquaintances  in  London  were  of  a  more  or  less 
discreditable  sort,  Constance  seemed  to  have  friends 
everywhere,  a.nd  these  in  almost  every  case  people  of 
standing  and  importance.  Her  army  friends  were  apt 
to  be  generals,  her  political  friends  ex-Ministers,  her 
journalistic  friends  editors,  and  so  forth.  And  I 
But  you  have  seen  my  record  up  to  this  point. 

Nobody  could  possibly  want  Constance  so  much  as 
I  did,  I  thought.  But  an  astonishing  number  of 
persons  of  infinitely  more  consequence  than  myself 
seemed  to  delight  to  honour  her,  to  obtain  her  co- 
operation. And  I  loved  her.  There  was  no  possi- 
bility of  my  mistaking  the  fact.  I  had  been  used  to 
debate  with  myself  regarding  Sylvia  Wheeler. 
There  was  no  room  for  debate  where  my  feeling  for 
Constance  was  concerned.  The  hour  of  her  break- 
down in  Fleet  Street  on  Black  Saturday  had  taught 
me  so  much. 

In  the  face  of  my  circumstances  just  then,  the  idea 
of  making  any  definite  disclosure  of  my  feelings  to 
Constance  seemed  impracticable.  Yet  there  was  one 
intimate  passage  between  us  during  that  week,  the 
nature  of  which  I  cannot  precisely  define.  I  know  I 
conveyed  some  hint  to  Constance  of  my  feeling  toward 

222 


THE    FIRST    DAYS 

her,  and  I  was  made  vaguely  conscious  that  anything 
like  a  declaration  of  love  would  have  seemed  shocking 
to  her  at  that  time.  She  held  that,  at  such  a  junc- 
ture, no  merely  personal  interests  ought  to  be  allowed 
to  weigh  greatly  with  any  one.  The  country's  call 
upon  its  subjects  was  all-absorbing  in  the  eyes  of 
this  "  one  little  bit  of  a  girl  from  South  Africa,"  as 
Crondall  had  called  her.  It  made  me  feel  ashamed  to 
realize  how  far  short  I  fell  (even  after  the  shared  ex- 
periences culminating  in  Black  Saturday)  of  her 
personal  standard  of  patriotism.  Even  now,  my 
standing  in  her  eyes,  my  immediate  personal  needs, 
loomed  nearer,  larger  in  my  mind  than  England's 
fate.  I  admitted  as  much  with  some  shamefacedness, 
and  Constance  said: 

"  Ah,  well,  Dick,  I  suspect  that  is  a  natural  part  of 
life  lived  entirely  in  England,  the  England  of  the 
past.  There  was  so  little  to  arouse  the  other  part  in 
one.  All  the  surrounding  influences  were  against  it. 
My  life  has  been  different.  Once  one  has  lived,  in 
one's  own  home,  through  a  native  rising,  for  instance, 
purely  personal  interests  never  again  seem  quite  so 
absorbing.  The  elemental  things  had  been  so  long 

shut  out  of  English  life.    Why,  do  you  know ?  " 

And  she  began  to  tell  me  of  one  of  the  schemes  in 
which  she  was  interested;  in  connection  with  which 
I  learned  of  a  cable  message  she  had  received  that 
day  telling  that  John  Crondall  was  then  on  his  way 
to  England. 

The  least  forgiving  critics  of  "  The  Destroyers  " 
have  admitted  that  they  did  their  best  and  worked 
well  during  those  strange  weeks  which  came  immedi- 

223 


THE    MESSAGE 

ately  after  the  invasion.  One  reason  of  this  was  that 
party  feeling  in  politics  had  been  scotched.  The 
House  of  Commons  met  as  one  party.  There  was  no 
longer  any  real  Opposition,  unless  one  counted  a  small 
section  of  rabid  anti-Britishers,  who  were  incapable 
of  learning  a  lesson ;  and  even  they  carped  but  feebly, 
while  the  rest  of  the  House  devoted  its  united  ener- 
gies to  the  conduct  of  the  country's  shattered  business 
with  the  single  aim  of  restoring  normal  conditions. 
Throughout  the  country  two  things  were  tacitly  ad- 
mitted. That  the  Government  in  power  must  pres- 
ently answer  for  its  doings  to  the  public  before  ceas- 
ing to  be  a  Government;  and  that  the  present  was 
no  time  for  such  business  as  that  of  a  general  election. 

And  so  we  had  the  spectacle  of  a  Government  which 
had  entirely  lost  the  confidence  of  the  electors,  a 
Government  anathematized  from  the  Orkneys  to 
Land's  End,  carrying  on  its  work  with  a  unison  and 
a  complete  freedom  from  opposition  such  as  had  not 
been  known  before,  even  by  the  biggest  majority  or 
the  most  popular  Administration  which  had  ever  sat 
at  Westminster.  For  the  first  time,  and  by  no  effort 
of  our  own,  we  obtained  the  rule  of  an  Imperial  Par- 
liament devoted  to  no  other  end  than  the  nation's 
welfare.  The  House  of  Commons  witnessed  many 
novel  spectacles  at  that  time  —  such  as  consultations 
between  the  leading  members  of  the  Government  and 
the  Opposition.  Most  of  its  members  learned  many 
valuable  lessons  in  those  first  weeks  of  the  new  regime. 
It  is  to  be  supposed  that  the  Surrender  Riot  had 
taught  them  something. 

It  must  also  be  admitted  that  General,  or,  as  he 


now  was,  General  Baron  von  Fiichter,  accomplished 
some  fine  work  during  this  same  period.  It  has  been 
said  that  he  was  but  consulting  the  safety  of  his 
Imperial  master's  armed  forces;  but  credit  may 
safely  be  given  the  General  for  the  discretion  and 
despatch  he  used  in  distributing  the  huge  body  of 
troops  at  his  command,  without  hitch  or  friction,  to 
the  various  centres  which  it  was  his  plan  to  occupy. 
His  was  a  hand  of  iron,  but  he  used  it  to  good  pur- 
pose; and  the  few  errors  of  his  own  men  were  pun- 
ished with  an  even  more  crushing  severity  than  he 
showed  where  British  offences  were  concerned. 

The  task  of  garrisoning  those  English  ports  with 
German  soldiers  was  no  light  or  easy  one;  no  task 
for  a  light  or  gentle  hand.  In  carrying  out  this 
undertaking  a  very  little  weakness,  a  very  small  dis- 
play of  indecision,  might  easily  have  meant  an  ap- 
palling amount  of  bloodshed.  As  it  was,  the  whole 
business  was  completed  in  a  wonderfully  short  while, 
and  with  remarkable  smoothness.  The  judicial  and 
municipal  administration  of  these  centres  was  to  re- 
main English;  but  supreme  authority  was  vested  in 
the  officer  commanding  the  German  forces  in  each 
place,  and  the  heads  of  such  departments  as  the  postal 
and  the  police,  were  German.  No  kind  of  public 
gathering  or  demonstration  was  permissible  in  these 
towns,  unless  under  the  auspices  of  the  German  of- 
ficer in  command,  who  in  each  case  was  given  the  rank 
of  Governor  of  the  town. 

We  had  learned  by  this  time  that  the  Channel 
Fleet  had  not  been  entirely  swept  away.  But  a  por- 
tion of  it  was  destroyed,  and  the  remaining  ships  had 

225 


THE    MESSAGE 

been  entrapped.  It  was  strategy  which  had  kept 
British  ships  from  our  coasts  during  the  fatal  week 
of  the  invasion.  "  The  Destroyers  "  were  responsi- 
ble for  our  weak-kneed  concessions  to  Berlin  some 
years  earlier,  in  the  matter  of  wireless  telegraphy. 
In  the  face  of  urgent  recommendations  to  the  con- 
trary from  experts,  the  Government  had  yielded  to 
German  pressure  in  the  matter  of  making  our  own 
system  interchangeable,  and  had  even  boasted  of  their 
diplomacy  in  thus  ingratiating  themselves  with  Ger- 
many. As  a  consequence,  the  enemy  had  been  able 
to  convey  messages  purporting  to  come  from  the 
British  Admiralty  and  ordering  British  commanders 
to  keep  out  of  home  waters. 

That  these  messages  should  have  been  conveyed  in 
secret  code  form  was  a  mystery  which  subsequent 
investigations  failed  to  solve.  Some  one  had  played 
traitor.  But  the  history  of  the  invasion  has  shown 
us  that  we  had  very  many  traitors  among  us  in  those 
days ;  and  there  came  a  time  when  the  British  public 
showed  clearly  that  it  was  weary  of  Commissions  of 
Inquiry.  Where  so  many,  if  not  indeed  all  of  us, 
were  at  fault,  where  the  penalty  was  so  crushing,  it 
was  felt  that  there  were  other  and  more  appropriate 
openings  for  official  energy  and  public  interest  than 
the  mere  apportioning  of  blame  and  punishment, 
however  well  deserved. 

The  issue  of  what  was  called  the  "  Invasion 
Budget "  was  Parliament's  first  important  act,  after 
the  dispersal  of  the  German  forces  in  England,  and 
the  termination  of  the  Government  distribution  of 
food  supplies.  The  alterations  of  customs  tariff  were 

226 


THE    FIRST    DAYS 

not  particularly  notable.  The  House  had  agreed  that 
revenue  was  the  objective  to  be  considered,  and  fiscal 
adjustments  with  reference  to  commerce  were  post- 
poned for  the  time.  The  great  change  was  in  the 
income-tax.  The  minimum  income  to  be  taxed  was 
f  100  instead  of,  as  formerly,  £160.  The  scale  ran 
like  this:  sixpence  in  the  pound  upon  incomes  of 
between  £100  and  £150,  ninepence  from  that  to 
£200,  one  shilling  from  that  to  £250,  one  and  three- 
pence from  that  to  £500,  one  and  sixpence  from  that 
to  £1,000,  two  shillings  upon  all  incomes  of  between 
£1,000  and  £5,000,  and  four  shillings  in  the  pound 
upon  all  incomes  of  over  £5,000. 

It  was  on  the  day  following  that  of  the  Invasion 
Budget  issue  that  I  received  a  letter  from  my  sister 
Lucy,  in  Davenham  Minster,  telling  me  of  my 
mother's  serious  illness,  and  asking  me  to  come  to 
her  at  once.  And  so,  after  a  hurried  visit  to  the 
South  Kensington  flat  to  explain  my  absence  to  Con- 
stance, I  turned  my  back  upon  London,  for  the  first 
time  in  a  year,  and  journeyed  down  into  Dorset. 


n 


ANCIENT    LIGHTS 

Then  the  progeny  that  springs 

From  the  forests  of  our  land, 
Armed  with  thunder,  clad  with  wings, 

Shall  a  wider  world  command. 

Kegions  Caesar  never  knew 
Thy  posterity  shall  sway. 

COWPER. 

IN  the  afternoon  of  a  glorious  summer's  day,  ex- 
actly three  weeks  after  leaving  London,  I  stood 
beside  the  newly  filled  grave  of  my  mother  in  the 
moss-grown  old  churchyard  of  Davenham  Minster. 

My  dear  mother  was  not  one  of  those  whose  end 
was  hastened  by  the  shock  of  England's  disaster. 
Doctor  Wardle  gave  us  little  hope  of  her  recovery 
from  the  first.  The  immediate  cause  of  death  was 
pneumonia ;  but  I  gathered  that  my  mother  had  come 
to  the  end  of  her  store  of  vitality,  and,  it  may  be,  of 
desire  for  life.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  her 
complete  freedom  from  those  domestic  cares  of  house- 
keeping, which  had  seemed  to  be  the  very  source  and 
fountainhead  of  continuous  worry  for  her,  may 
actually  have  robbed  my  mother  of  much  of  her  hold 
upon  life.  In  these  last  days  I  had  been  almost  con- 

228 


ANCIENT    LIGHTS 

tinuously  beside  her,  and  I  know  that  she  relinquished 
her  life  without  one  sigh  that  spelt  regret. 

Standing  there  at  the  edge  of  her  grave  in  the 
hoary  churchyard  of  the  Minster,  I  was  conscious  of 
the  loss  of  the  last  tie  that  bound  me  to  the  shelter 
of  youth:  the  cared- for,  irresponsible  division  of  a 
man's  life.  The  England  of  my  youth  was  no  more. 
Now,  in  the  death  of  my  mother,  it  seemed  as  if  I  had 
stepped  out  of  one  generation  into  another.  I  had 
entered  a  new  generation,  and  was  alone  in  it. 

I  was  to  sleep  at  my  sister's  house  that  night,  but 
I  had  no  wish  to  go  there  now.  Doctor  Wardle's 
forced  gravity,  his  cheerful  condolences,  rather  wor- 
ried me.  So  it  happened  that  I  set  out  to  walk  from 
the  churchyard,  and  presently  found  myself  upon  the 
winding  upland  road  that  led  out  of  the  rich  Daven- 
ham  valley,  over  the  Ridgeway,  and  into  the  hilly 
Tarn  Regis  country,  where  I  was  born. 

I  drank  a  mug  of  cider  in  the  quaint  little  beer- 
house kept  by  Gammer  Joy  in  Tarn  Regis,  and  read 
again  the  doggerel  her  grandfather  had  painted  on 
its  sign-board,  in  which  the  traveller  was  advised  of 
the  various  uses  of  liquor,  taken  in  moderation,  and 
the  evil  effects  of  its  abuse.  Taken  wisely,  I  remember, 
it  was  suggested  that  liquor  proved  the  best  of  lubri- 
cants for  the  wheels  of  life.  Mrs.  Joy  looked  just 
as  old  and  just  as  active  and  rosy  as  she  had  always 
looked  for  so  long  as  I  could  remember;  and  she 
hospitably  insisted  upon  my  eating  a  large  slab  of 
her  dough  cake  with  my  cider  —  a  very  excellent 
comestible  it  was. 

The  old  dame's  mood  was  cheerfully  pessimistic  — 
229 


THE    MESSAGE 

that  is  to  say,  she  was  garrulous,  and  spoke  cheerily 
of  generally  downward  tendencies.  Thus,  the  new 
rector,  by  her  way  of  it,  was  of  a  decadent  modern 
type,  full  of  newfangled  "  Papish "  notions  as  to 
church  vestments  and  early  services,  and  neglectful 
of  traditional  responsibilities  connected  with  soup  and 
coal  and  medical  comforts.  Cider  was  no  longer  what 
it  used  to  be,  I  gathered,  since  the  big  brewers  took 
it  in  hand,  and  spoiled  the  trade  of  those  who  had 
hand-presses.  As  for  farming,  Gammer  Joy  held 
that  it  was  not  near  so  good  a  trade  for  master  or 
man  with  land  at  fifteen  shillings  the  acre,  as  much 
of  it  was  thereabouts,  as  it  had  been  with  rents  up  to 
two  or  three  pounds,  and  food  twice  as  dear  as 
now. 

"  But  there,  Master  Dick,"  said  the  old  lady ;  "  I 
suppose  we  be  all  Germans  now  —  so  they  do  tell  me, 
however ;  an'  if  we  be  no  better  nor  furriners  here  in 
Darset,  why  I  doan't  know  as't  matters  gertly  wha' 
cwomes  to  us  at  all.  But  I  will  say  things  wor  dif- 
ferent in  your  f eyther's  time,  Master  Dick  —  that 
they  was.  Ah  doan't  believe  he'd  ha'  put  up  wi'  this 
German  business  for  a  minute,  that  ah  doan't." 

I  gathered  that  the  new  rector  was  an  earnest 
young  man  and  a  hard  worker;  but,  evidently,  those 
of  Gammer  Joy's  generation  preferred  my  father's 
aloofness  in  conjunction  with  his  regular  material 
dispensations,  and  his  habit  of  leaving  folk  severely 
to  themselves,  so  far  as  their  thoughts  and  feelings 
were  concerned. 

The  cottagers  with  whom  I  talked  that  summer's 
evening  cherished  a  monumental  ignorance  regarding 

230 


ANCIENT    LIGHTS 

the  real  significance  of  the  events  which  had  shaken 
England  to  its  very  roots  since  I  had  last  seen  Tarn 
Regis.  Gammer  Joy's  view  seemed  to  be  fairly  typ- 
ical. We  had  become  German ;  England  belonged  to 
Germany ;  the  Radicals  had  sold  us  to  the  Kaiser  — 
and  so  forth.  But  no  German  soldiers  had  been  seen 
in  Dorset.  The  whole  thing  was  shadowy,  academic, 
a  political  business ;  suitable  enough  for  the  discus- 
sion of  Londoners,  no  doubt,  but,  after  all,  of  small 
bearing  upon  questions  of  real  and  intimate  interest, 
such  as  the  harvest,  the  weather,  and  the  rate  of 
wages. 

"  Sims  queer,  too,  that  us  should  be  born  again  like, 
and  become  Germans,"  said  one  man  to  me ;  "  but  ah 
doan't  know  as  it  meakes  much  odds  to  the  loike  o' 
we;  though  ah  hev  heerd  as  how  Farmer  Jupp  be 
thinkin'  o'  gettin'  shut  o'  his  shartharn  bull  that  won 
the  prize  to  Davenham,  an'  doin'  wi'  fower  men  an'  a 
b'y,  in  place  o'  sevin.  Well,  o'  course,  us  has  to  keep 
movin'  wi'  the  times,  as  sayin'  is ;  an'  'tis  trew  them 
uplan'  pastures  o'  Farmer  Jupp's  they  do  be  mos' 
onusual  poor  an'  leery,  as  you  med  say." 

Twilight  already  held  the  land  in  its  grave  embrace 
when  I  made  my  way  along  Abbott's  Lane  (my  father 
had  devoted  months  to  the  task  of  tracing  the  origin 
of  that  name)  and  began  the  ascent  of  Barebarrow, 
by  crossing  which  diagonally  one  reaches  the  Daven- 
ham turnpike  from  Tarn  Regis,  a  shorter  route  by 
nearly  a  mile  than  that  of  the  road  past  the  mill  and 
over  the  bridge.  And  so,  presently,  my  feet  were 
treading  turf  which  had  probably  been  turf  before 
the  Christian  era.  Smooth  and  vast  against  the  sky- 

231 


THE    MESSAGE 

line,  Barebarrow  lay  above  me,  like  a  mammoth  at 
rest. 

On  its  far  side  was  our  Tarn  Regis  giant,  a  famous 
figure  cut  in  the  turf,  and  clearly  visible  from  the 
tower  of  Davenham  Minster.  Long  ago,  in  my  earli- 
est childhood,  village  worthies  had  given  me  the  story 
of  this  figure  —  how  once  upon  a  time  a  giant  came 
and  slew  all  the  Tarn  Regis  flocks  for  his  breakfast. 
Then  he  lay  down  to  sleep  behind  Barebarrow,  and 
while  he  slept  the  enraged  shepherds  and  work-folk 
bound  him  with  a  thousand  cart-ropes,  and  slew  him 
with  a  thousand  scythes  and  forks  and  other  homely 
implements.  And  then,  that  posterity  might  know 
his  fearsome  bulk,  they  cut  out  the  turf  all  round  his 
form,  and  eke  the  outline  of  the  club  beside  him,  and 
left  the  figure  there  to  commemorate  their  valour  and 
the  loss  of  their  flocks.  Some  three  hundred  feet  long 
it  was,  I  think,  with  a  club  the  length  of  a  tall  pine- 
tree.  In  any  case,  the  Tarn  Regis  lad  who  would 
excel  in  feats  of  strength  had  but  to  spend  the  night 
of  Midsummer's  Eve  in  the  crook  of  the  giant's  arm 
(as  some  one  or  two  did  every  year),  and  other 
youths  of  the  countryside  could  never  stand  a  chance 
with  him. 

I  paused  on  the  ledge  below  the  barrow  beside  a 
ruined  shepherd's  hut,  and  recalled  the  fact  that  here 
my  father  had  unearthed  sundry  fragments  of  stone 
and  pieces  of  implements  which  the  Dorchester 
Museum  curator  had  welcomed  as  very  early  British 
relics.  They  went  back,  I  remembered,  to  long  before 
the  Roman  period;  to  days  possibly  more  remote 
than  those  of  ancient  Barebarrow  himself.  If  you 

232 


ANCIENT   LIGHTS 

refer  to  a  good  map  you  will  find  this  spot  surrounded 
by  such  indications  of  immemorial  antiquity  as 
"Tumuli,"  "British  Village,"  and  the  like.  The 
Roman  encampment  on  the  other  side  of  Davenham 
Minster  was  modernity  itself,  I  thought,  compared 
with  this  ancient  haunt  of  the  neolithic  forerunners  of 
the  early  Briton ;  this  resting-place  of  men  whose 
doings  were  a  half -forgotten  story  many  centuries 
before  the  birth  of  Julius  Caesar. 

I  sat  down  on  the  grassy  ledge  and  looked  out 
across  the  lichen-covered  roofs  and  squat,  rugged 
church  tower  of  Tarn  Regis;  and  pictures  rose  in 
my  mind,  pictures  to  some  extent  inspired,  perhaps, 
by  scraps  I  had  read  of  learned  essays  written  by  my 
father.  He  had  loved  this  ancient  ground;  he  had 
been  used  to  finger  the  earth  hereabouts  as  a  man 
might  finger  his  mistress's  hair.  I  do  not  know  what 
period  my  twilit  fancy  happened  upon,  but  it  was 
assuredly  a  later  one  than  that  of  Barebarrow,  for 
I  saw  shaggy  warriors  with  huge  pointless  swords, 
their  hilts  decorated  with  the  teeth  of  wild  beasts  — 
a  Bronze  Age  vision,  no  doubt.  I  saw  rude  chariots 
of  war,  with  murderous  scythe-blades  on  their  wheels 
—  and,  in  a  flash  then,  the  figure  of  Boadicea :  that 
valiant  mother  of  our  race,  erect  and  fearless  in  her 

chariot  — 

Kegions  Caesar  never  knew, 
Thy  posterity  shall  sway  ! 

"  Thy  posterity  shall  sway !  "  If  you  repeat  the 
lines  to  yourself  you  may  see  the  outline  of  my  vision. 
There  at  the  foot  of  Barebarrow  I  saw  that  Queen 
of  ancient  Britons  at  the  head  of  her  wild,  shaggy 

233 


THE    MESSAGE 

legions.  "  The  Roman  Army  can  never  withstand 
the  shouts  and  clamour  of  so  many  thousands,  far 
less  their  shock  and  fury,"  said  the  Queen.  I  saw  her 
lead  her  valiant  horde  upon  Colchester,  and  for  me 
the  ancient  rudeness  of  it  all  was  shot  through  and 
through  with  glimpses  of  the  scientific  sacking  of 
Colchester,  as  I  had  read  of  it  but  a  few  weeks  ago. 
I  saw  the  advance  of  the  Roman  Governor ;  the  awful 
slaughter  of  the  British ;  the  end  of  the  brave  Queen 
who  could  not  brook  defeat:  the  most  heart-stirring 
episode  in  English  history. 

**  Thy  posterity  shall  sway ! "  I  recalled  the 
solemn  splendour  of  another  great  Queen's  passing 
—  that  which  I  had  seen  with  my  own  eyes  while  still 
a  lad  at  Rugby:  the  stately  gathering  of  the  great 
ships  at  Spithead ;  the  end  of  Victoria  the  Good.  No 
more  than  a  step  it  seemed  from  my  vision  of  the  un- 
conquerable Boadicea.  But  to  that  other  onslaught 
upon  Colchester  —  to  General  von  Fiichter's  slaugh- 
ter of  women  and  children  and  unarmed  men  in 
streets  of  houses  whose  ashes  must  be  warm  yet  —  O 
Lord,  how  far!  I  thought.  Could  it  really  be  that 
a  thousand  years  of  inviolability  had  been  broken, 
ended,  in  those  few  wild  days ;  ended  for  ever  ? 

Lights  twinkled  now  among  the  nestling  houses  of 
the  little  place  where  I  was  born.  They  made  me 
think  of  torches,  the  clash  of  arms,  the  spacious 
mediaeval  days  when  Davenham  Minster  supported  a 
great  monastery,  whose  lordly  abbot  owned  the  land 
Tarn  Regis  stood  upon. 

And  then  the  little  lights  grew  misty  and  dim  in 
my  eyes  as  glimpses  came  of  my  own  early  days ;  of 

234 


ANCIENT    LIGHTS 

play  on  that  very  ridge-side  where  I  sat  now,  where 
I  had  then  romantically  sworn  friendship  with  George 
Stairs  on  the  eve  of  my  departure  for  Elstree  School, 
and  his  leaving  with  his  father  for  Canada.  How 
had  I  kept  my  vow?  Where  was  George  Stairs  now? 
There  was  not  a  foot  of  that  countryside  we  had  not 
roamed  together.  My  eyes  pricked  as  I  looked  and 
listened.  Exactly  so,  I  thought,  the  sheep-bells  had 
sounded  below  Barebarrow  when  I  had  lain  listening 
to  them  in  that  low-pitched  back  bedroom  of  the  Rec- 
tory which  I  had  been  proud  to  hear  called  "  Dick's 
Room,"  after  my  first  experience  of  sleeping  alone. 

Then  for  a  space  my  mind  was  blank  as  the  dark 
valley  beyond  the  village  —  until  thoughts  and  pic- 
tures of  recent  happenings  began  to  oust  the  gentler 
memories,  and  I  lived  over  again  the  mad,  wild,  tragic 
week  which  culminated  in  the  massacre  of  the  North 
London  trenches.  But  in  the  light  of  my  previous 
musings  I  saw  these  happenings  differently,  more 
personally,  than  in  the  actual  experience  of  them.  It 
seemed  now  that  not  my  country  only,  but  myself, 
had  been  struck  down  and  humbled  to  the  dust  by  the 
soldiers  of  the  Kaiser.  I  saw  the  broad  fair  faces  of 
the  German  cavalry  as  they  had  sat  their  horse  in 
Whitehall  on  the  evening  of  Black  Saturday.  I 
heard  again  the  clank  of  their  arms,  the  barking  of 
guttural  orders.  Could  it  be  that  they  had  mastered 
England?  that  for  nine  long  years  we  were  to  be 
encircled  by  their  garrisons?  Nine  years  of  helotry ! 

A  sudden  coolness  in  the  air  reminded  me  of  the 
lateness  of  the  hour,  and  I  rose  and  began  to  cross 
Barebarrow. 


But  this  ancient  land  was  British  in  every  blade  of 
its  grass,  I  thought  —  root  and  crop,  hill  and  dale, 
above  and  beneath,  no  single  sod  of  it  but  was  British. 
Surely  nothing  could  alter  that.  Nine  years  of  hel- 
otry !  I  heard  again  the  confused  din  of  the  West- 
minster Riot;  the  frantic  crowd's  insistent  demand 
for  surrender,  for  unconditional  surrender.  And 
now  the  nation's  word  was  pledged.  Our  heads  were 
bowed  for  nine  years  long. 

Suddenly,  then,  as  I  descended  upon  the  turnpike, 
a  quite  new  thought  came  to  me.  The  invasion  had 
overridden  all  law,  all  custom,  all  understandings. 
The  invasion  was  an  act  of  sheer  lawless  brutality. 
No  surrender  could  bind  a  people  to  submission  in 
the  face  of  such  an  outrage  as  that.  The  Germans 
must  be  driven  out;  the  British  people  must  rise  and 
cast  them  out,  and  overthrow  for  ever  their  insolent 
dominion.  But  too  many  of  the  English  people  were 
—  like  myself !  Well,  they  must  learn ;  we  must  all 
learn ;  every  able-bodied  man  must  learn ;  for  a  blow 
had  to  be  struck  that  should  free  England  for  ever. 
The  country  must  be  awakened  to  realization  of  that 
need.  We  owed  so  much  to  the  brave  ones  who  gave 
us  England;  so  much  could  be  demanded  of  us  by 
those  that  came  after.  The  thing  had  got  to  be. 

I  walked  fast,  I  remember,  and  singing  through 
my  head  as  I  entered  Davenham  Minster,  long  after 
my  sister's  supper  hour,  were  the  lines  to  which  I  had 
never  till  then  paid  any  sort  of  heed : 

Regions  Caesar  never  knew, 
Thy  posterity  shall  sway! 

236 


m 


THE    RETURN    TO    LONDON 

Oh  !  'tis  easy 

To  beget  great  deeds  ;  but  in  the  rearing  of  them  — 
The  threading  in  cold  blood  each  mean  detail, 
And  furze  brake  of  half-pertinent  circumstance  — 
There  lies  the  self-denial.  —  CHARLES  KINGSLBY. 

I  SPENT  but  one  other  day  in  Dorset  after  my 
walk  out  to  Tarn  Regis,  and  then  took  train  in 
the  morning  for  London. 

I  believe  I  have  said  before  that  Doctor  Wardle, 
my  sister's  husband,  was  prosperous  and  popular. 
The  fact  made  it  natural  for  me  to  accept  my 
mother's  disposition  of  her  tiny  property,  which,  in 
a  couple  of  sentences,  she  had  bequeathed  solely  to 
me.  My  sister  had  no  need  of  the  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  a  year  that  was  derived  from  my  mother's 
little  capital,  which  had  been  invested  in  Canadian 
securities  and  was  unaffected  by  England's  losses. 
Thus  I  was  now  possessed  of  means  sufficient  to  pro- 
vide me  with  the  actual  necessities  of  life;  and, 
though  I  had  not  thought  of  it  before,  realization  of 
this  came  to  me  while  I  attended  to  the  winding  up 
of  my  mother's  small  affairs,  bringing  with  it  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  comfort  and  security. 

It  was  with  a  strongly  hopeful  feeling,  a  sense 
237 


THE     MESSAGE 

almost  of  elation,  that  I  stepped  from  the  train  at 
Waterloo.  My  quiet  days  and  nights  in  Dorset  had 
taught  me  something;  and,  particularly,  I  had 
gained  much,  in  conviction  and  in  hope,  from  the  eve- 
ning spent  by  Barebarrow.  I  cannot  say  that  I  had 
any  definite  plans,  but  I  was  awake  to  a  genuine  sense 
of  duty  to  my  native  land,  and  that  was  as  strange 
a  thing  for  me  as  for  a  great  majority  of  my  fellow 
countrymen.  I  was  convinced  that  a  great  task 
awaited  us  all,  and  I  determined  upon  the  perform- 
ance of  my  part  in  it.  I  suppose  I  trusted  that  Lon- 
don would  show  me  the  particular  form  that  my  eif ort 
should  take.  Meanwhile,  as  a  convert,  the  missionary 
feeling  was  strong  in  me. 

I  might  have  made  shift  to  afford  better  quarters, 
perhaps,  but  it  was  to  my  original  lodging  in  Blooms- 
bury  that  I  drove  from  Waterloo.  Some  few  belong- 
ings of  mine  were  there,  and  I  entertained  a  friendly 
sort  of  feeling  for  my  good-hearted  but  slatternly 
landlady,  and  for  poor,  overworked  Bessie,  with  her 
broad,  generally  smutty  face,  and  lingering  remains 
of  a  Dorset  accent.  The  part  of  London  with  which 
I  was  familiar  had  resumed  its  normal  aspect  now, 
and  people  were  going  about  their  ordinary  avoca- 
tions very  much  as  though  England  never  had  been 
invaded. 

But  in  the  north  and  east  of  the  capital  were  streets 
of  burned  and  blackened  houses,  and  the  Epping  and 
Romford  districts  were  one  wilderness  of  ruins,  and 
of  graves ;  while  across  East  Anglia,  from  the  coast 
to  the  Thames,  the  trail  of  the  invaders  was  as  the 
track  of  a  locust  plague,  but  more  terrible  by  reason 

238 


THE    RETURN    TO    LONDON 

of  its  blood-soaked  trenches,  its  innumerable  shallow 
graves,  and  its  charred  remains  of  once  prosperous 
towns.  Hundreds  of  ruined  farmers  and  small  land- 
holders were  working  as  navvies  at  bridge  and  road 
and  railway  repairs. 

A  great  many  people  had  been  ruined  during  those 
few  nightmare  days  of  the  invasion,  and  every  man 
in  England  was  burdened  now  with  a  scale  of  taxa- 
tion never  before  known  in  the  country.  But  business 
had  resumed  its  sway,  and  London  looked  very  much 
as  ever.  The  need  there  was  for  a  general  making 
good,  from  London  to  the  Wash,  provided  a  great 
deal  of  employment,  and  the  Government  had  taken 
such  steps  as  it  could  to  make  credit  easy.  But  Con- 
sols were  still  as  low  as  sixty-eight;  prices  had  not 
yet  fallen  to  the  normal  level,  and  money  was  every- 
where scarce. 

In  the  middle  afternoon  I  set  out  for  South  Ken- 
sington to  see  Constance  Grey,  to  whom  I  had  written 
only  once  during  my  absence,  and  then  only  to  tell 
her  of  my  mother's  death.  She  had  replied  by  tele- 
graph, a  message  of  warm  and  friendly  sympathy. 
I  knew  well  that  she  was  always  busy,  and,  like  most 
moderns  who  have  written  professionally,  I  suppose 
we  were  both  bad  correspondents.  Now  there  was 
much  of  which  I  wanted  to  talk  with  Constance,  and 
it  was  with  a  feeling  of  sharp  disappointment  that  I 
learned  from  the  servant  at  the  flat  that  she  was  not 
at  home.  Mrs.  Van  Homrey  was  in,  however,  and  in 
a  few  moments  I  was  with  her  in  the  little  drawing- 
room  where  I  had  passed  the  night  of  London's  ex- 
hausted sleep  on  Black  Saturday. 

239 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  Yes,  you  have  just  missed  my  niece,"  said  Mrs. 
Van  Homrey,  after  a  kindly  reference  to  the  strip 
of  crepe  on  my  arm.  "  She  has  gone  in  to  Victoria 
Street  to  a  i  conference  of  the  powers  '  of  John  Cron- 
dall's  convening.  Oh,  didn't  you  know  he  was  here 
again?  Yes,  he  arrived  last  week,  and,  as  usual,  is 
up  to  his  neck  in  affairs  already,  and  Constance  with 
him.  I  verily  believe  that  child  has  discovered  the 
secret  of  perpetual  motion." 

At  first  mention  of  John  Crondall's  name  my  heart 
had  warmed  to  its  recollection  of  the  man,  and  a 
pleasurable  thought  of  meeting  him  again.  And 
immediately  then  the  warm  feeling  had  been  pene- 
trated by  a  vague  sense  of  disquiet,  when  Mrs.  Van 
Homrey  spoke  of  his  affairs  —  "  and  Constance  with 
him."  But  I  was  not  then  conscious  of  the  meaning 
of  my  momentary  discomfort,  though,  both  then  and 
afterwards,  I  read  emphasis  and  meaning  into  Mrs. 
Van  Homrey's  coupling  of  the  two  names.  I  asked 
what  the  "  conference  "  was  about,  but  gathered  that 
Mrs.  Van  Homrey  was  not  very  fully  informed. 

"  I  know  they  are  to  meet  these  young  Canadian 
preachers  who  are  so  tremendously  praised  by  the 

Standard What  are  their  names,  again  ?  Tcha ! 

How  treacherous  my  memory  grows !  You  know  the 
men  I  mean.  John  Crondall  met  them  the  day  after 
their  arrival  last  week,  and  is  enthusiastic  about 
them." 

I  felt  very  much  out  of  the  movement.  During 
the  few  days  immediately  preceding  my  mother's 
death,  and  since  then,  I  had  not  even  seen  a  news- 
paper, and,  being  unusually  preoccupied,  not  only 

240 


THE    RETURN    TO    LONDON 

over  the  events  of  my  stay  at  Davenham  Minster, 
but  by  developments  in  my  own  thoughts,  I  seemed 
to  have  lost  touch  with  current  affairs. 

"  And  what  does  John  Crondall  think  of  the  out- 
look?" I  asked. 

"  Well,  I  think  his  fear  is  that  people  in  the  coun- 
try —  outside  East  Anglia,  of  course  —  may  fail  to 
realize  all  that  the  invasion  has  meant  and  will  mean ; 
and  that  Londoners  and  townsfolk  generally  may  slip 
back  into  absorption  in  business  and  in  pleasure  as 
soon  as  they  can  afford  that  again,  and  forget  the 
fact  that  England  is  practically  under  Germany's 
heel  still." 

"  The  taxes  will  hardly  allow  them  to  do  that, 
surely,"  I  said. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  The  English  are  a  wonder- 
ful people.  The  invasion  was  so  swift  and  sudden; 
the  opposition  to  it  was  so  comparatively  trifling; 
surrender  and  peace  came  so  soon,  that  really  I  don't 
know  but  what  John  is  right.  He  generally  is.  You 
must  remember  that  millions  of  the  people  have  not 
seen  a  German  soldier.  They  have  had  no  discipline 
yet.  Even  here  in  London,  as  soon  as  the  people 
spoke  decidedly,  peace  followed.  They  did  not  have 
to  strike  a  blow.  They  did  not  feel  a  blow.  They 
were  not  with  you  and  Conny,  remember,  at  those 
awful  trenches.  Anyhow,  John  thinks  the  danger  is 
lest  they  forget  again,  and  regard  the  whole  tragic 
business  as  a  new  proof  of  England's  ability  to 
*  muddle  through  ?  anything,  without  any  assistance 
from  them.  Of  course,  England's  wealth  is  still 
great,  and  her  recuperative  powers  are  wonderful; 

241 


THE    MESSAGE 

but  John  Crondall  holds  that,  in  spite  of  that,  sub- 
mission to  nine  years  of  German  occupation  and 
German  tribute-paying  will  mean  the  end  of  the 
British  Empire." 

"  And  he  feels  that  the  people  must  be  stirred  into 
seeing  that  and  acting  on  it  ?  "  I  said,  recalling  my 
own  thoughts  during  the  night  walk  from  Bare- 
barrow. 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  that  is  his  view.  But,  now  I  come 
to  think  of  it,  why  should  you  waste  your  time  in 
talking  to  an  old  woman  who  can  only  give  you 
echoes?  It  is  only  half  an  hour  since  Conny  started. 
Why  not  hurry  on  to  John  Crondall's  place,  and  join 
them  there?  He  has  often  spoken  of  you,  Conny 
tells  me." 

This  seemed  to  me  too  good  a  suggestion  to  neg- 
lect, and  ten  minutes  later  I  was  on  my  way  to  St. 
James's  Park  by  underground  railway.  I  bought  an 
evening  paper  on  my  way,  and  read  an  announcement 
to  the  effect  that  General  Baron  von  Fiichter,  after 
returning  to  Portsmouth  from  his  visit  to  Berlin,  had 
definitely  decided  that  Portsmouth  and  Devonport 
could  no  longer  remain  British  naval  bases,  and  that 
no  British  sailors  or  soldiers  in  uniform  could  in 
future  be  admitted  into  any  of  the  towns  in  England 
now  occupied  by  Germany. 


242 


IV 


THE    CONFERENCE 

Once  to  every  man  and  nation  comes  the  moment  to  decide, 
In  the  strife  of  Truth  with  Falsehood,  for  the  good  or  evil  side  ; 
Some  great  cause,  God's  new  Messiah  offering  each  the  bloom  or 

blight, 

Parts  the  goats  upon  the  left  hand,  and  the  sheep  upon  the  right ; 
And  the  choice  goes  by  for  ever  'twixt  that  darkness  and  that  light. 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

A  FEW  seconds  after  his  servant  had  shown  me 
into  the  dining-room  of  John  Crondall's  flat, 
the  man  himself  entered  to  me  with  a  rush,  as  his 
manner  was,  both  hands  outstretched  to  welcome  me. 

"  Good  man !  "  he  said.  "  I've  had  fine  news  of 
you  from  Constance  Grey,  and  now  you're  here  to 
confirm  it.  Splendid !  " 

And' then,  with  sudden  gravity,  and  a  glance  at  my 
coat  sleeve :  "  I  heard  of  your  loss.  I  know  what  it 
means.  I  lost  my  mother  when  I  was  in  Port  Arthur, 
and  I  know  London  looked  different  because  of  it 
when  I  got  back.  It's  a  big  wrench;  one  we've  all 
got  to  face." 

"  Yes.  I  think  my  mother  died  without  regret ; 
she  was  very  tired." 

There  was  a  pause,  and  then  I  said: 

"  But  I  may  have  chosen  my  time  badly,  to-day. 
243 


THE    MESSAGE 

Mrs.  Van  Homrey  said  you  had  a  conference.     If 

you " 

"  Tut,  tut,  man !  Don't  talk  nonsense.  I  was  just 
going  to  say  how  well  you'd  timed  things.  I  don't 
know  about  a  conference,  but  Constance  is  here,  and 
Varley,  and  Sir  Herbert  Tate  —  he  took  on  the  secre- 
taryship of  the  Army  League,  you  know,  after  Gil- 
bert chucked  it  —  and  Winchester.  You  know  Win- 
chester, the  Australian  rough-rider,  who  did  such  fine 
work  with  his  bushman  corps  in  the  South  African 
war  —  and  —  let  me  see !  And  Forbes  Thompson, 
the  great  rifle  clubman,  you  know ;  and  the  Canadian 
preachers  —  splendid  fellows,  by  Jove !  Simply 
splendid  they  are,  I  can  tell  you.  I  look  for  great 
things  from  those  two.  Stairs  is  English,  of  course, 
but  he's  been  nearly  all  his  life  in  British  Columbia 
and  the  Northwest,  and  he's  got  all  the  eternal  youth, 
the  fire  and  grit  and  enthusiasm  of  the  Canadian, 
with  —  somehow,  something  else  as  well  —  good.  His 
chum,  Reynolds,  is  an  out-and-out  Canadian,  born  in 
Toronto  of  Canadian  parents.  Gad,  there's  solid  tim- 
ber in  that  chap,  I  can  tell  you.  But,  look  here! 
Come  right  in,  and  take  a  hand.  I'm  awfully  glad 
you  came.  I  heard  all  about  The  Mass  and  that; 
but,  bless  me,  I  can  see  in  your  eye  that  that's  all 
past  and  done  with  for  ever.  By  the  way,  I  heard 
last  night  that  your  Mr.  Clement  Blaine  had  got  a 
job  after  his  own  heart,  in  the  pay  of  the  Germans 
at  Chatham  —  interpreter  in  the  passport  office,  or 
some  such  a  thing.  What  a  man !  Well,  come  along 
in,  my  dear  chap,  and  give  us  the  benefit  of  your 
wisdom." 

244 


THE    CONFERENCE 

We  were  leaving  the  room  now. 

"  I  knew  you'd  like  Constance,"  he  said.  "  She's 
the  real  thing,  isn't  she?  " 

I  despised  myself  for  the  hint  of  chill  his  words 
brought  me.  What  right  had  I  to  suspect  or  resent? 
And  in  any  case  John  Crondall  spoke  in  his  custom- 
ary frank  way,  with  never  a  hint  of  afterthought. 

"Yes,"  I  said;   "she's  splendid." 

"  And  such  a  head-piece,  my  boy.  By  Jove,  she  has 

a  better  head  for  business  than Here  we  are, 

then." 

Constance  Grey  was  naturally  the  first  to  greet  me 
in  the  big  room  where  John  Crondall  did  his  work  and 
met  his  friends.  There  was  welcome  in  her  beautiful 
eyes,  but,  obviously,  Constance  was  very  much  pre- 
occupied. Then  I  was  presented  to  Sir  Morell 
Strachey,  Sir  Herbert  Tate,  and  Forbes  Thompson, 
and  then  to  the  Canadian  parson,  the  Rev.  George 
Stairs.  I  had  paid  no  attention  to  the  name  when 
Crondall  had  mentioned  it  in  the  other  room.  Now, 
as  he  named  the  parson  again,  I  looked  into  the  man's 
face,  and 

"  Mordan  ?  Why,  not  Dick  Mordan,  of  Tarn 
Regis?"  said  the  parson. 

"  By  gad !  George  Stairs !  I  was  thinking  of 
you  on  the  side  of  Barebarrow  the  night  before 
last." 

"  And  I  was  thinking  of  you,  Dicky  Mordan,  yes- 
terday afternoon,  when  I  met  the  present  rector  of 
Tarn  Regis  at  a  friend's  house." 

It  was  a  long  strong  handshake  that  we  exchanged. 
Sixteen  years  on  the  young  side  of  thirty  is  a  con- 

245 


THE    MESSAGE 

siderable  stretch  of  time,  and  all  that  had  passed 
since  I  had  last  seen  my  old  Tarn  Regis  playmate. 

Stairs  introduced  me  to  his  friend,  Reynolds,  and 
I  learned  the  curious  fact  that  this  comrade  and  chum 
of  my  old  friend's  was  also  a  parson,  but  not  of 
Stairs's  church.  Reynolds  had  qualified  at  a  theo- 
logical training  college  in  Ontario,  and  had  been 
Congregational  minister  in  the  parish  of  which  Stairs 
had  been  vicar  for  the  last  three  years. 

There  was  a  big  table  in  the  middle  of  the  room, 
littered  over  with  papers  and  writing  materials. 
About  this  table  we  presently  all  found  seats. 

"  Now  look  here,  my  friends,"  said  John  Crondall, 
"  this  is  no  time  for  ceremoniousness,  apologies,  and 
the  rest  of  it,  and  I'm  not  going  to  indulge  in  any. 
No  doubt  we've  all  of  us  got  special  interests  of  our 
own,  but  there's  one  we  all  share;  and  it  comes  first 
with  all  of  us,  I  think.  We  all  want  the  same  thing 
for  England  and  the  Empire,  and  we  all  want  to  do 
what  we  can  to  help.  It's  because  of  that  I  dismiss 
the  ceremonies,  and  don't  say  anything  about  the 
fear  of  boring  you,  and  all  that.  I  don't  even  make 
exceptions  of  you,  Stairs,  or  you,  Reynolds.  I  tell 
you  quite  frankly  I  want  to  poke  and  pry  into  your 
plans.  I  want  to  know  all  about  'em.  I've  sense 
enough  to  see  that  you  wield  a  big  influence.  I  am 
certain  I  have  your  sympathy  in  my  aims.  And  I 
want  to  find  out  how  far  I  can  make  your  aims  help 
my  aims.  Afl  I  know  is  that  you  have  addressed 
three  meetings,  each  bigger  than  the  last;  and  that 
your  preaching  is  the  real  right  thing.  Now  I  want 

246 


THE    CONFERENCE 

you  to  tell  us  as  much  as  you  will  about  your  plans. 
You  know  we  are  all  friends  here." 

Stairs  looked  at  Reynolds,  and  Reynolds  nodded  at 
Stairs. 

"  Well,"  said  the  latter,  smiling,  first  at  Crondall, 
and  then  at  me,  "  our  plans  are  simplicity  itself.  In 
Canada  we  have  not  risen  yet  to  the  cultivation  of 
much  diplomacy.  We  don't  understand  anything  of 
your  high  politics,  and  we  don't  believe  in  roundabout 
methods.  For  instance,  I  suppose  here  in  England 
you  don't  find  parsons  of  one  denomination  working 
in  partnership  much  with  parsons  of  another  denomi- 
nation. Well,  now,  when  I  took  over  from  my  prede- 
cessor at  Kooteray,  I  found  my  friend  Reynolds  do- 
ing a  fine  work  there,  among  the  farmers  and  miners, 
as  Congregational  minister.  He  was  doing  precisely 
the  work  I  wanted  to  do;  but  there  was  only  one  of 
him.  Was  I  to  fight  shy  of  him,  or  set  to  work,  as  it 
were,  in  opposition  to  him  ?  Well,  anyhow,  that  didn't 
seem  to  me  the  way.  We  had  our  own  places  of  wor- 
ship ;  but,  for  the  rest,  both  desiring  the  one  thing 
—  the  Christian  living  of  the  folk  in  our  district  — 
we  worked  absolutely  shoulder  to  shoulder.  There 
were  a  few  worthy  folk  who  objected;  but  when 
Reynolds  and  I  came  to  talk  it  over,  we  decided  that 
these  had  as  much  religion  as  was  good  for  them 
already,  and  that  we  could  afford  rather  to  ignore 
them,  if  by  joint  working  we  could  rope  in  the  folk 

who  had  next  to  none  at  all You  must  forgive 

my  slang,  Miss  Grey." 

Constance  smiled  across  at  the  parson. 


"  You  forget,  Mr.  Stairs,  I  grew  up  on  the  veld," 
she  said. 

"  Ah,  to  be  sure ;  I  suppose  one  is  as  close  to  the 
earth  and  the  realities  there  as  in  Canada." 

"  Quite,"  said  Crondall.  "  And,  anyhow,  we  are 
not  doing  any  apologies  to-day ;  so  please  go  ahead." 

"  Well,"  continued  George  Stairs,  "  we  often  talked 
over  Old  Country  affairs,  Reynolds  and  I.  Reynolds 
had  only  spent  three  months  over  here  in  his  life,  but 
I  fancy  I  learned  more  from  him  than  he  from  me." 

"  That's  a  mistake,  of  course,"  said  Reynolds. 
"  He  had  the  facts  and  the  knowledge.  I  merely 
supplied  a  fresh  point  of  view  —  home-grown  Cana- 
dian." 

"  Ah,  well,  we  found  ourselves  very  much  in  agree- 
ment, anyhow,  about  Home  affairs  and  about  the 
position  of  the  Anglican  Church  in  Canada ;  the  need 
there  is  for  less  exclusiveness  and  more  direct  meth- 
ods. The  idea  of  coming  Home  and  preaching 
through  England,  a  kind  of  pilgrimage  —  that  was 
entirely  Reynolds's  own.  I  would  have  come  with 
him  gladly,  when  we  had  our  district  in  good  going 
order  out  there.  But,  you  see,  I  had  no  money.  My 
friend  had  a  little.  Then  my  father  died.  He  had 
been  ailing  for  a  long  time,  and  I  verily  think  the 
news  of  the  invasion  broke  his  heart.  He  died  in  the 
same  week  that  it  reached  him,  and  left  his  two 
farms,  with  some  small  house  property,  to  me. 

"  My  father's  death  meant  for  me  a  considerable 
break.  The  news  from  England  shocked  me  inex- 
pressibly. It  was  such  a  terrible  realization  of  the 
very  fears  that  Reynolds  and  myself  had  so  often  dis- 

248 


cussed  —  the  climax  and  penalty  of  England's  mad 
disregard  of  duty ;  of  every  other  consideration  ex- 
cept pleasure,  easy  living,  comfort,  and  money-mak- 
ing." 

"  This  is  the  pivot  of  the  whole  business,  that  duty 
question,"  interposed  Crondall.  "  It  was  your  han- 
dling of  that  on  Tuesday  that  burdened  you  with  my 
acquaintance.  I  listened  to  that,  and  I  said,  *  Mr. 
George  Stairs  and  you  have  got  to  meet,  John  Cron- 
dall ! '  But  I  didn't  mean  to  interrupt." 

"  Well,  as  I  say,  I  found  myself  rather  at  a  part- 
ing of  the  ways,  and  then  came  my  good  friend  here, 
and  he  said,  '  What  about  these  farms  and  houses  of 
yours,  Stairs?  They  represent  an  income.  What 
are  you  going  to  do  about  it?  '  And  —  well,  you  see, 
that  settled  it.  We  just  packed  our  bags  and  came 
over." 

"  And  now  that  you  are  here?  "  said  John  Cron- 
dall. 

"  Well,  you  heard  what  we  had  to  say  the  other 
afternoon  ?  " 

"  I  did  —  every  word  of  it." 

"  Well,  that's  what  we  are  here  for.  Our  aim  is  to 
take  that  message  to  every  man  and  woman  in  this 
country ;  and  we  believe  God  will  give  us  zest  and 
strength  enough  to  bring  it  home  to  them  —  to  make 
them  feel  the  truth  of  it.  Your  aim,  naturally,  is 
political  and  patriotic.  I  don't  think  you  can  have 
any  warmer  sympathizers  than  Reynolds  and  myself. 
But  our  part,  as  you  see,  is  another  one,  and  outside 
politics.  We  believe  the  folk  at  Home  have  lost  their 
bearings;  their  compasses  want  adjusting.  I  say 

249 


THE    MESSAGE 

here  what  I  should  not  venture  to  admit  to  a  less  sym- 
pathetic and  indulgent  audience:  Reynolds  and  my- 
self aim  at  arousing,  by  God's  will,  the  sleeping  sense 
of  duty  in  our  kinsmen  here  at  Home.  We  have  no 
elaborate  system,  no  finesse,  no  complicated  issues 
to  consider.  Our  message  is  simply :  *  You  have 
forgotten  Duty ;  and  the  Christian  life  is  not  possible 
while  Duty  remains  forgotten  or  ignored.'  Our  pur- 
pose is  just  to  give  the  message;  to  prove  it;  make 
it  real;  make  it  felt." 

Crondall  had  been  looking  straight  at  the  speaker 
while  he  listened,  his  face  resting  between  his  two 
hands,  his  elbows  planted  squarely  on  the  table.  Now 
he  seemed  to  pounce  down  upon  Stairs's  last  words. 

"  And  yet  you  say  your  part  is  another  one  than 
ours.  But  why  not  the  same?  Why  not  the  very 
essence  and  soul  of  our  part,  Stairs?" 

"Gad  —  he's  right!"  said  Sir  Herbert  Tate,  in 
an  undertone.  Reynolds  leaned  forward  in  his  chair, 
his  lean,  keen  face  alight. 

"  Why  not  the  very  soul  of  our  part,  Stairs  —  the 
essential  first  step  toward  our  end?  Our  part  is  to 
urge  a  certain  specific  duty  on  them  —  a  duty  we 
reckon  urgent  and  vital  to  the  nation.  But  we  can't 
do  that  unless  we,  or  you,  can  first  do  your  part  — 
rousing  them  to  the  sense  of  duty  —  Duty  itself. 
Man,  but  your  part  is  the  foundation  of  our  part  — 
foundation,  walls,  roof,  corner-stone,  complete!  We 
only  give  the  structure  a  name.  Why,  I  give  you 
my  word,  Stairs,  that  that  address  of  yours  on  Tues- 
day was  the  finest  piece  of  patriotic  exhortation  I 
ever  listened  to." 

250 


THE    CONFERENCE 

"  But  —  it's  very  kind  of  you  to  say  so ;  but  I 
never  mentioned  King  or  country." 

"  Exactly !  You  gave  them  the  root  of  the  whole 
matter.  You  cleared  a  way  into  their  hearts  and 
heads  which  is  open  now  for  news  of  King  and  coun- 
try. It's  as  though  I  had  to  collect  some  money  for 
an  orphanage  from  a  people  who'd  never  heard  of 
charity.  Before  I  see  the  people  you  teach  'em  the 
meaning  and  beauty  of  charity  —  wake  the  charita- 
ble sense  in  them.  You  needn't  bother  mentioning 
orphanages ;  but  if  I  come  along  in  your  rear,  my 
chances  of  collecting  the  money  are  a  deal  rosier  than 
if  you  hadn't  been  there  first  —  what?" 

"  I  see  —  I  see,"  said  Stairs,  slowly. 

"  Mr.  Crondall,  you  ought  to  have  been  a  Cana- 
dian," said  Reynolds,  in  his  dry  way.  His  use  of 
the  "  Mr.,"  even  to  a  man  who  had  no  hesitation  in 
calling  him  plain  "  Reynolds,"  was  just  one  of  the 
tiny  points  of  distinction  between  himself  and 
Stairs. 

"  Oh,  Canada  has  taught  me  something ;  and  so 
have  South  Africa  and  India ;  and  so  have  you  and 
Stairs,  with  your  mission,  or  pilgrimage,  or  what- 
ever it  is  —  your  Message." 

"  Well,"  said  Stairs,  "  it  seems  to  me  your  view  of 
our  pilgrimage  is  a  very  kindly,  and  perhaps  flat- 
tering one ;  and  as  I  have  said,  your  aims  as  a  citizen 
of  the  Empire  and  a  lover  of  the  Old  Country  could 
not  have  warmer  sympathizers  than  Reynolds  and 
myself ;  but " 

"  Mind,  I'm  not  trying  to  turn  your  religious 
teaching  to  any  ignoble  purpose,"  said  Crondall, 

251 


THE    MESSAGE 

quickly.  "  I  am  not  asking  you  to  introduce  a  single 
new  word  or  thought  into  it  for  my  sake." 

"  That's  so,"  said  Reynolds,  his  eye  upon  Stairs. 

"  Quite  so,  quite  so,"  said  Stairs.  "  And,  of 
course,  I  am  with  you  in  all  you  hope  for;  but  you 
know,  Crondall,  religion  is  perhaps  a  rather  different 
matter  to  a  parson  from  what  it  is  to  you.  Forgive 
me  if  I  put  it  clumsily,  but " 

And  now,  greatly  daring,  I  ventured  upon  an  inter- 
ruption, speaking  upon  impulse,  without  considera- 
tion, and  hearing  my  voice  as  though  it  were  some- 
thing outside  myself. 

"  George  Stairs,"  I  said  —  and  I  fancy  the 
thoughts  of  both  of  us  went  back  sixteen  years  — 
"  what  was  it  you  thought  about  the  Congregational 
minister  when  you  took  over  your  post  at  Kooteray? 
How  did  you  decide  to  treat  him?  Did  you  ever  re- 
gret the  partnership?  " 

"  Now  if  that  isn't  straight  out  Western  fashion  !  " 
murmured  Reynolds.  Constance  beamed  at  me  from 
her  place  beside  John  Crondall. 

"  I  leave  it  at  that,"  said  our  host. 

"  A  palpable  bull's-eye,"  said  Forbes  Thompson. 

I  hardly  needed  George  Stairs's  friendly  clap  on 
the  shoulder,  nor  the  assurance  of  his: 

"  You  are  right,  Dick.  You  have  shown  me  my 
way  in  three  words." 

"  Good,"  said  Reynolds.  "  Well,  now  I  don't  mind 
saying  what  I  wouldn't  have  said  before,  that  among 
the  notes  we  drew  up  nearly  three  years  ago " 

"  You  drew  up,  my  friend,"  said  Stairs. 

"  Among  the  notes  we  drew  up,  I  say,  on  this  ques- 
252 


THE    CONFERENCE 

tion  of  neglected  duty,  were  details  as  to  the  citizen's 
obligations  regarding  the  defence  of  his  home  and 
native  land,  with  special  reference  to  the  callous  neg- 
lect of  Lord  Roberts's  campaign  of  warning  and  ex- 
hortation. Now,  Stairs,  you  know  as  well  as  I  do, 
you  wrote  with  your  own  hand  the  passage  about  the 
Englishman's  sphere  of  duty  being  as  much  wider 
than  his  country  as  Greater  Britain  was  wider  than 
Great  Britain.  You  know  you  did." 

"  Oh,  you  can  count  me  in,  all  right,  Reynolds ; 
you  know  I'm  not  one  for  half -measures." 

"  Well,  now,  my  friends,  I  believe  I  see  daylight. 
By  joining  hands  I  really  believe  we  are  going  to 
accomplish  something  for  England."  Crondall  looked 
round  the  table  at  the  faces  of  his  friends.  "  We  are 
all  agreed,  I  know,  that  the  present  danger  is  the 
danger  Kipling  tried  to  warn  us  about  years  and 
years  ago." 

"  '  Lest  we  forget ! ' : '   quoted  Sir  Herbert  quietly. 

"  Exactly.  There  are  so  many  in  England  who 
have  neither  seen  nor  felt  anything  of  the  blow  we 
have  had." 

And  here  I  told  them  something  of  what  I  had  seen 
and  heard  in  Dorset;  how  remote  and  unreal  the 
whole  thing  was  to  folk  there. 

"  That's  it,  exactly,"  continued  Crondall.  "  That's 
one  difficulty  which  has  just  got  to  be  overcome. 
Another  is  the  danger  that,  among  those  who  did  see 
and  feel  something  of  it,  here  in  London,  and  even  in 
East  Anglia,  the  habit  of  apathy  in  national  matters, 
and  the  calls  of  business  and  pleasure  may  mean  for- 
getting, indifference  —  the  old  fatal  neglect.  You 
253 


THE    MESSAGE 

see,  we  must  remember  that,  crushing  as  the  blow  was, 
it  did  not  actually  reach  so  very  many  people.  It 
did  not  force  them  to  get  up  and  fight  for  their  lives. 
It  was  all  over  so  soon.  Directly  they  cried  out, 
*  The  Destroyers  '  answered  with  surrender,  and  so 
helped  to  strengthen  the  fatal  delusion  they  had 
cherished  so  long,  that  everything  is  a  matter  of 
pounds,  shillings,  and  pence." 

" '  They'll  never  go  for  England,  because  Eng- 
land's got  the  dibs,'  "  quoted  Forbes  Thompson,  with 
a  nod  of  assent. 

"  Yes,  yes.  '  Make  alliances,  and  leave  me  to  my 
business ! '  One  knows  it  all  so  well.  But,  mind  you, 
even  to  the  blindest  of  them,  the  invasion  has  meant 
something." 

"  And  the  income-tax  will  mean  something  to  'em, 
too,"  said  Sir  Morell  Strachey. 

"  Yes.  But  the  English  purse  is  deep,  and  the 
Englishman  has  long  years  of  money-spinning  free- 
dom from  discipline  behind  him.  Still,  here  is  this 
brutal  fact  of  the  invasion.  Here  we  are  actually 
condemned  to  nine  years  of  life  inside  a  circle  of  Ger- 
man encampments  on  English  soil,  with  a  hundred 
millions  a  year  of  tribute  to  pay  for  the  right  to  live 
in  our  own  England.  Now  my  notion  is  that  the 
lesson  must  not  be  lost.  The  teaching  of  the  thing 
must  be  forced  home.  It  must  be  burnt  into  these 
happy-go-lucky  countrymen  of  ours  —  if  Stairs  and 
Reynolds  are  to  achieve  their  end,  or  we  ours." 

"  Our  aim  is  to  awake  the  sense  of  duty  which 
seems  to  us  to  have  become  atrophied,  even  among  the 
professedly  religious,"  said  Stairs. 


THE    CONFERENCE 

"  And  ours,"  said  Crondall,  sharp  as  steel,  "  is  to 
ram  home  your  teaching,  and  to  show  them  that  the 
nearest  duty  to  their  hand  is  their  duty  to  the  State, 
to  the  Race,  to  their  children  —  the  duty  of  freeing 
England  and  throwing  over  German  dominion." 

"  To  render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are 
Caesar's,"  said  Reynolds.  And  Stairs  nodded  agree- 
ment. 

"  Now,  by  my  way  of  it,  Stairs  and  Reynolds  must 
succeed  before  we  can  succeed,"  said  Crondall. 
"  That  is  my  view,  and  because  that  is  so,  you  can 
both  look  to  me,  up  till  the  last  breath  in  me,  for  any 
kind  of  support  I  can  give  you  —  for  any  kind  of 
support  at  all.  But  that's  not  all.  Where  you  sow, 
I  mean  to  reap.  We  both  want  substantially  the 
same  harvest  —  mine  is  part  of  yours.  I  know  I  can 
count  on  you  all.  You,  Stairs,  and  you,  Reynolds, 
are  going  to  carry  your  Message  through  England. 
I  propose  to  follow  in  your  wake  with  mine.  You 
rouse  them  to  the  sense  of  duty ;  I  show  them  their 
duty.  You  make  them  ready  to  do  their  duty;  I 
show  it  them.  I'll  have  a  lecturer.  I'll  get  pictures. 
They  shall  feel  the  invasion,  and  know  what  the  Ger- 
man occupation  means.  You  shall  convert  them,  and 
I'll  enlist  them." 

"  Enlist  them !  By  Jove !  that's  an  idea,"  said 
Forbes  Thompson.  "  A  patriotic  league,  a  league  of 
defenders,  a  nation  in  arms." 

"The  Liberators!" 

"  Ah !    Yes,  the  Liberators." 

"Or  the  Patriots,  simply?" 

"  I  would  enrol  them  just  as  citizens,"  said  Cron- 
255 


THE   MESSAGE 

dall.  "  By  that  time  they  should  have  learned  the 
meaning  of  the  word." 

"Yes,  by  Jove!  it  is  good  enough  —  just  'The 
Citizens,'  "  said  Sir  Morell  Strachey. 

And  then  a  servant  came  in  with  a  message  for 
Forbes  Thompson,  and  we  realized  that  dinner-time 
had  come  and  almost  gone.  But  we  were  in  no  mood 
for  separating  just  then,  and  so  every  one  welcomed 
John  Crondall's  invitation  to  dine  with  him  at  a 
neighbouring  hotel. 


256 


MY    OWN    PART 

Free  men  freely  work ; 
Whoever  fears  God,  fears  to  sit  at  ease. 

E.  B.  BROWNING. 

CONSTANCE  GREY  and  myself  were  the  last  of 
V_^/  John  Crondall's  guests  to  leave  him  on  that 
evening  of  the  conference.  As  soon  as  we  three  were 
alone,  Constance  turned  to  Crondall,  and  said: 

"  You  must  expect  to  have  me  among  your  camp 
followers  if  I  find  Aunt  Mary  can  stand  the  travel- 
ling. I  dare  say  there  will  be  little  things  I  can  do." 

"  Things  you  can  do !  By  George,  I  should  think 
so !  "  said  Crondall.  "  I  shall  look  to  you  to  capture 
the  women ;  and  if  we  get  the  women,  it  will  surprise 
me  if  we  don't  get  the  men  as  well.  Besides,  don't 
you  fancy  I  have  forgotten  your  prowess  as  a  speaker 
in  Cape  Town  and  Pretoria.  You  remember  that 
meeting  of  your  father's,  when  you  saved  him  from 
the  wrath  of  Vrow  Bischoff?  Why,  of  course,  I 
reckon  on  you.  We'll  have  special  women's  meet- 
ings." 

"  And  where  do  I  come  in  ?  "  I  asked,  with  an 
assumed  lightness  of  tone  which  was  far  from  express- 
ing my  feeling. 

257 


THE     MESSAGE 

"  Yes,"  said  Crondall,  eying  me  thoughtfully ; 
"  I've  been  thinking  of  that." 

As  he  said  that,  I  had  a  swift  vision  of  myself  and 
my  record,  as  both  must  have  appeared  to  a  man  like 
Crondall,  whose  whole  life  had  been  spent  in  patriotic 
effort.  The  vision  was  a  good  corrective  for  the 
unworthy  shafts  of  jealousy  —  for  that  no  doubt 
they  were  —  which  had  come  to  me  with  John  Cron- 
dall's  references  to  Constance.  I  was  admitted  cor- 
dially into  the  confidencec  of  these  people  from  whom, 
on  my  record,  I  scarcely  deserved  common  courtesy. 
It  was  with  a  distinctly  chastened  mind  that  I  gave 
them  both  some  outline  of  the  thoughts  and  resolu- 
tions which  had  come  to  me  during  my  evening  beside 
Barebarrow,  overlooking  sleepy  little  Tarn  Regis. 

"  It's  a  kind  of  national  telepathy,"  said  Crondall. 
"  God  send  it's  at  work  in  other  counties  besides 
Dorset." 

"  It  had  need  be,"  I  told  them ;  "  for  all  those  that 
I  spoke  to  in  Dorset  accepted  the  German  occupation 
like  a  thing  as  absolutely  outside  their  purview  as 
the  movements  of  the  planets." 

"  Yes,  they  want  a  lot  of  stirring,  I  know ;  but  I 
believe  we  shall  stir  'em  all  right.  But  about  your 
part  in  the  campaign.  Of  course,  I  recognize  that 
every  one  has  to  earn  his  living,  just  as  much  now  as 
before.  But  yet  I  know  you'd  like  to  be  in  this  thing, 
Dick  Mordan,  and  I  believe  you  can  help  it  a  lot. 
What  I  thought  of  was  this:  I  shall  want  a  secre- 
tary, and  want  him  very  badly.  He  will  be  the  man 
who  will  do  half  my  work.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
can't  pay  him  much,  for  every  cent  of  my  income  will 

258 


MY    OWN    PART 

be  wanted  in  the  campaign,  and  a  good  deal  more 
besides.  The  thing  is,  would  you  tackle  it,  for  the 
sake  of  the  cause,  for  a  couple  of  hundred  a  year? 
Of  course,  I  should  stand  all  running  expenses. 
What  do  you  think?  It's  not  much  of  an  offer,  but 
it  would  keep  us  all  together?  " 

Constance  looked  expectantly  at  me,  and  I  realized 
with  a  sudden  thrill  the  uses  of  even  such  small  means 
as  I  now  possessed. 

"  Well,  no,"  I  said ;  "  I  couldn't  agree  to  that." 
The  pupils  of  John  Crondall's  eyes  contracted 
sharply,  and  a  pained,  wondering  look  crept  into  the 
face  I  loved,  the  vivid,  expressive  face  of  Constance 
Grey.  "  But  what  I  would  put  my  whole  heart  and 
soul  into,  would  be  working  as  your  secretary  for  the 
sake  of  the  cause,  as  long  as  you  could  stand  the 
running  expense,  and  —  and  longer." 

I  think  the  next  minute  was  the  happiest  I  had  ever 
known.  I  dare  say  it  seems  a  small  enough  matter, 
but  it  was  the  only  thing  of  the  kind  I  had  ever  been 
able  to  do.  These  friends  of  mine  had  always  given 
so  much  to  our  country's  cause.  I  had  felt  myself 
so  far  beneath  them  in  this.  Now,  as  John  Cron- 
dall's strong  hand  came  down  on  my  shoulder,  and 
Constance's  bright  eyes  shone  upon  me  in  affectionate 
approval,  my  heart  swelled  within  me,  with  something 
of  the  glad  pride  which  should  be  the  possession  of 
every  man,  as  it  indubitably  is  of  every  true  citizen 
and  patriot. 

"  You  see,"  I  explained  deprecatingly,  as  Crondall 
swayed  my  shoulder  affectionately  to  and  fro  in  his 
firm  grip ;  "  I  have  become  a  sort  of  a  minor  capital- 

259 


THE    MESSAGE 

ist.  I  have  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  a  year  coming 
in,  and  so  I'm  as  free  as  I  am  glad  to  work  with  you, 
and  —  there'll  be  two  hundred  more  for  the  cam- 
paign, you  see." 

"  God  bless  you,  old  chap !  You  and  Constance  and 
I,  we'll  move  mountains  —  even  the  great  mountain 
of  apathy  —  between  us.  Sir  Herbert  offers  a  thou- 
sand pounds  toward  expenses,  and  Forbes  Thompson 
and  Varley  are  ready  to  speak  for  us  anywhere  we 
like,  and  Winchester  has  a  pal  who  he  says  will  work 
wonders  as  a  kind  of  advance  agent.  I'm  pretty  sure 
of  Government  help,  too  —  or  Opposition  help ; 
they'll  be  governing  before  Christmas,  you'll  find. 
Now,  we  all  meet  here  again  the  day  after  to-morrow. 
We  three  will  see  each  other  to-morrow,  I  expect. 
I  must  write  a  stack  of  letters  before  the  midnight 
post." 

"Well,  can  I  lend  a  hand?"    I  asked. 

"  No,  not  to-night,  Mr.  Secretary  Dick,  thank 
you !  But  it's  late.  Will  you  take  Constance  home  ? 
I'll  get  my  fellow  to  whistle  up  a  cab." 

Ten  minutes  earh'er  I  should  have  been  chilled  by 
his  implied  guardianship  of  Constance;  but  now  I 
had  that  within  which  warmed  me  through  and 
through:  the  most  effectual  kind  of  protection 
against  chill.  So  all  was  settled,  and  we  left  John 
Crondall  to  his  letters.  And,  driving  out  to  South 
Kensington,  we  talked  over  our  hopes,  Constance  and 
I,  as  partners  in  one  cause. 

"  This  is  the  beginning  of  everything  for  me,  Con- 
stance," I  said,  when  we  parted  in  the  hall  below  her 
flat. 

260 


MY    OWN    PART 

"  It  is  going  to  be  the  beginning  of  very  much  for 
a  good  many,"  she  said,  as  she  gave  me  her  hand. 

"  I  wonder  if  you  know  how  much  —  for  me !  " 

"  I  think  so.    I  am  tremendously  glad  about  it  all." 

But  she  did  not  know,  could  not  know,  just  how 
much  it  meant  to  me. 

"  Good  night,  my  patriotic  Muse !  "   I  said. 

"  Good  night,  Mr.  Secretary  Dick !  " 

And  so  we  parted  on  the  night  of  my  return  to 
London. 


261 


VI 


PEEPAEATIONS 

We  were  dreamers,  dreaming  greatly,  in  the  man-stifled  town  ; 
We  yearned  beyond  the  sky-line  where  the  strange  roads  go  down. 
Came  the  Whisper,  came  the  Vision,  came  the  Power,  with  the 

Need, 
Till  the  Soul  that  is  not  man's  soul  was  lent  us  to  lead. 

Follow  after  —  follow  after  —  for  the  harvest  is  sown : 

By  the  bones  about  the  wayside  ye  shall  come  to  your  own  ! 

RUDYARD  KIPLING. 

NEVER  before  had  I  known  days  so  full,  so  com- 
pact of  effort  and  achievement,  as  were  those  of 
the  week  following  the  conference  in  John  Crondall's 
rooms.  I  could  well  appreciate  Winchester's  state- 
ment when  he  said  that :  "  John  Crondall  is  known 
through  three  Continents  as  a  glutton  for  work." 

Our  little  circle  represented  Canada,  South  Africa, 
Australia,  and  the  Mother  Country ;  and,  while  I 
admit  that  my  old  friend,  George  Stairs,  and  his 
Canadian-born  partner,  Reynolds,  could  give  points 
to  most  people  in  the  matter  of  unwearying  energy, 
yet  I  am  proud  to  report  that  the  member  of  our 
circle  who,  so  to  say,  worked  us  all  to  a  standstill  was 
John  Crondall,  an  Englishman  born  and  bred.  I 
said  as  much  in  the  presence  of  them  all,  and  when 

262 


PREPARATIONS 

my  verdict  was  generally  endorsed,  John  Crondall 
qualified  it  with  the  remark: 

"  Well,  I  can  only  say  that  pretty  nearly  all  I 
know  about  work  I  learned  in  the  Colonies." 

And  I  learned  later  on  to  realize  the  justice  of  this 
qualification.  Colonial  life  does  teach  directness  and 
concentration.  Action  of  any  sort  in  England  was 
at  that  time  hedged  about  by  innumerable  complica- 
tions and  cross  issues  and  formalities,  many  of 
which  we  have  won  clear  from  since  then.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  strength  of  our  Colonial  support  which 
set  the  pace  of  our  procedure.  Whatever  the  cause, 
I  know  I  never  worked  harder,  or  accomplished  more ; 
and  I  had  never  been  so  happy. 

I  think  John  Crondall  must  have  interviewed  from 
two  to  three  hundred  prominent  politicians  and  mem- 
bers of  the  official  world  during  that  week.  I  have 
heard  it  said  by  men  who  should  know,  that  the  money 
Crondall  spent  in  cable  messages  to  the  Colonies  that 
week  was  the  price  of  the  first  Imperial  Parliament 
ever  assembled  in  Westminster  Hall.  I  use  these 
words  in  their  true  sense,  their  modern  sense,  of 
course.  Nominally,  the  House  of  Commons  had  long 
been  the  "  Imperial  "  Parliament. 

I  know  that  week's  work  established  The  Citizens 
as  an  already  powerful  organization,  with  a  long  list 
of  names  famous  in  history  among  its  members,  with 
a  substantial  banking  account,  and  with  volunteer 
agents  in  every  great  centre  in  the  kingdom.  The 
motto  and  watchword  of  The  Citizens,  as  engraved 
upon  a  little  bronze  medal  of  membership,  was: 

263 


THE    MESSAGE 

"For  God;  our  Race;  and  Duty."  The  oath  of 
enrolment  said: 

"  I  do  hereby  undertake  and  promise  to  do 

my  duty  to  God,  to  our  Race,  and  to  the  British 
Empire  to  the  utmost  limit  of  my  ability,  without 
fear  and  without  compromise,  so  help  me  God ! " 

John  Crondall  interviewed  the  editors  of  most  of 
the  leading  London  newspapers  during  that  week, 
and  thereby  earned  a  discreet  measure  of  journalistic 
support  for  his  campaign.  There  was  a  great  need 
of  discretion  here,  for  our  papers  were  carefully 
studied  in  Berlin,  as  well  as  by  the  German  Generals 
commanding  the  various  English  towns  now  occupied 
by  the  Kaiser's  troops.  It  was,  of  course,  most  im- 
portant that  no  friction  should  be  caused  at  this 
stage. 

But  it  was  with  regard  to  the  preaching  pilgrim- 
age of  the  two  Canadian  parsons  that  Crondall's 
friends  of  the  Press  rendered  us  the  greatest  possible 
service.  Here  no  particular  reticence  was  called  for, 
and  the  Press  could  be,  and  was,  unreservedly  helpful 
and  generous.  In  estimating  the  marvellous  achieve- 
ments of  the  two  preachers,  I  do  not  think  enough 
weight  has  been  attached  to  the  great  services  ren- 
dered to  their  mission  by  such  journals  as  the  great 
London  daily  which  published  each  morning  a 
column  headed,  "  The  New  Evangel,"  and,  indeed,  by 
all  the  newspapers  both  in  London  and  the  prov- 
inces. 

We  were  not  directly  aiming,  during  that  first 
week,  at  enrolling  members.  No  recruiting  had  been 
done.  Yet  when,  at  the  end  of  the  week,  a  meeting 

264 


PREPARATIONS 

of  the  executive  committee  was  held  at  the  West- 
minster Palace  Hotel,  the  founder,  John  Crondall, 
was  able  to  submit  a  list  of  close  upon  six  hundred 
sworn  members  of  The  Citizens;  and,  of  these,  I  sup- 
pose fully  five  hundred  were  men  of  high  standing 
in  the  world  of  politics,  the  Services,  commerce,  and 
the  professions.  Among  them  were  three  dukes, 
twenty-three  peers,  a  Field  Marshal,  six  newspaper 
proprietors,  eleven  editors,  seven  of  the  wealthiest 
men  in  England,  and  ninety-eight  prominent  Mem- 
bers of  Parliament.  And,  as  I  say,  no  systematic  re- 
cruiting had  been  done. 

At  that  meeting  of  the  executive  a  great  deal  of 
important  business  was  transacted.  John  Crondall 
was  able  to  announce  a  credit  balance  of  ten  thousand 
pounds,  with  powers  to  overdraw  under  guarantee  at 
the  Bank  of  England.  A  simple  code  of  membership 
rules  and  objects  was  drawn  up  for  publication,  and 
a  short  code  of  secret  rules  was  formed,  by  which 
every  sworn  member  was  to  be  bound.  These  rules 
stipulated  for  implicit  obedience  to  the  decision  and 
orders  of  the  executive,  and  by  these  every  member 
was  bound  to  take  a  certain  course  of  rifle  drill,  and 
to  respond  immediately  to  any  call  that  should  be 
made  for  military  service  within  the  British  Isles 
during  a  period  of  twelve  months  from  the  date  of 
enrolment.  John  Crondall  announced  that  there  was 
every  hope  of  The  Citizens  obtaining  from  the  Gov- 
ernment a  grant  of  one  service  rifle  and  one  hundred 
rounds  of  ammunition  for  every  member  who  could 
pass  a  simple  medical  examination. 

"  We  may  not  actually  secure  this  grant  until  after 
265 


THE    MESSAGE 

the  general  election,"  Crondall  explained ;  "  but  it 
can  be  regarded  as  a  certain  asset." 

It  was  decided  that,  officially,  there  should  be  no 
connection  between  the  Canadian  preachers,  as  every 
one  called  them,  and  the  propaganda  of  The  Citizens. 
But  it  was  also  privately  agreed  that  steps  should  be 
taken  to  follow  the  Canadians  throughout  their  pil- 
grimage with  lectures  and  addresses,  and  meetings  at 
which  members  could  be  enrolled  upon  the  roster  of 
The  Citizens,  including  volunteer  instructors  in  rifle 
drill.  My  friend  Stairs  attended  this  meeting  with 
Reynolds,  and,  after  discussion,  it  was  agreed  that, 
for  the  present,  they  should  not  visit  the  towns  occu- 
pied by  the  Germans. 

"  The  people  there  have  their  lesson  before  them 
every  day  and  all  day  long,"  said  John  Crondall. 
"  The  folk  we  want  to  reach  are  those  who  have  not 
yet  learned  their  lesson.  My  advice  is  to  attack 
London  first.  Enlist  London  on  your  side,  and  on 
that  go  to  the  provinces." 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  discussion  over  this,  and 
finally  an  offer  John  Crondall  made  was  accepted  by 
Stairs  and  Reynolds,  and  our  meeting  was  brought  to 
a  close.  What  Crondall  said  was  this : 

"  To-day  is  Monday.  There  is  still  a  great  deal  of 
detail  to  be  attended  to.  Officially,  there  must  be  no 
connection  between  Stairs  and  Reynolds  and  The 
Citizens.  Actually,  we  know  the  connection  is  vital. 
Give  me  the  rest  of  this  week  for  arrangements,  and 
I  promise  that  we  shall  all  gain  by  it.  I  will  not 
appear  in  the  matter,  and  I  will  see  you  each  evening 

266 


PREPARATIONS 

for  consultation.  Your  pilgrimage  shall  begin  on 
Sunday,  and  ours  within  a  day  or  so  of  that." 

Then  followed  another  week  of  tense  effort.  Stairs 
and  Reynolds  both  addressed  minor  gatherings  dur- 
ing the  week,  and  met  John  Crondall  every  evening 
for  consultation.  On  Wednesday  the  principal  Im- 
perialistic newspaper  in  London  appeared  with  a  long 
leading  article  and  three  columns  of  descriptive  expo- 
sition of  "  The  New  Evangel."  On  the  same  day 
the  papers  published  despatches  telling  of  the  de- 
parture from  their  various  homes  of  the  Premiers, 
and  two  specially  elected  representatives  of  all  the 
British  Colonies,  who  were  coming  to  England  for 
an  Imperial  Conference  at  Westminster.  The  Gov- 
ernment's resignation  was  expected  within  the  month, 
and  writs  for  the  election  were  to  be  issued  immedi- 
ately afterwards. 

On  Wednesday  evening  and  Thursday  morning  the 
newspapers  of  London  alone  published  one  hundred 
and  thirteen  columns  of  matter  regarding  the  mes- 
sage and  the  pilgrimage  of  the  Rev.  George  Stairs 
and  the  Rev.  Arthur  J.  Reynolds.  During  the  latter 
part  of  the  week  all  London  was  agog  over  the  Cana- 
dian preachers.  As  yet,  very  little  had  appeared  in 
print  regarding  The  Citizens. 

On  Sunday  morning  at  three  o'clock  John  Crondall 
went  into  his  bedroom  to  sleep,  and  I  slept  in  the 
room  he  had  set  aside  for  me  in  his  flat  —  too  tired 
out  to  undress.  Even  Crondall's  iron  frame  was 
weary  that  night,  and  he  admitted  to  me  before  re- 
tiring from  a  table  at  which  we  had  kept  three  type- 

267 


THE    MESSAGE 

writers  busy  till  long  after  midnight,  that  he  had 
reached  his  limit  and  must  rest. 

"  I  couldn't  stand  another  hour  of  it  —  unless  it 
were  necessary,  you  know,"  was  his  way  of  putting 
it. 

By  my  persuasion  he  kept  his  bed  during  a  good 
slice  of  Sunday  morning,  and  lunched  with  me  at 
Constance  Grey's  flat.  He  always  said  that  Mrs.  Van 
Homrey  was  the  most  restful  tonic  London  could 
supply  to  any  man.  I  went  to  the  morning  service 
at  Westminster  Abbey  that  day  with  Constance,  and 
listened  to  a  magnificent  sermon  from  the  Bishop  of 
London,  whose  text  was  drawn  from  the  sixth  chapter 
of  Exodus :  "  And  I  will  take  you  to  me  for  a  people, 
and  I  will  be  to  you  a  God." 

The  Bishop  struck  a  strong  note  of  hopefulness, 
but  there  was  also  warning  and  exhortation  in  his  dis- 
course. He  spoke  of  sons  of  our  race  who  had  gone 
into  far  countries,  and,  carrying  our  Faith  and  tra- 
ditions with  them,  had  preserved  these  and  wrought 
them  into  a  finer  fabric  than  the  original  from  which 
they  were  drawn.  And  now,  when  a  great  affliction 
had  come  upon  the  people  of  England,  their  sons  of 
the  Greater  Britain  oversea  were  holding  out  kindly 
hands  of  friendship  and  support.  But  it  was  not 
alone  in  the  material  sense  that  we  should  do  well  to 
avail  ourselves  of  the  support  offered  us  from  the  out- 
side places.  These  wandering  children  of  the  Old 
Land  had  cherished  among  them  a  strong  and  simple 
godliness,  a  devout  habit  of  Christian  morality,  from 
which  we  might  well  draw  spiritual  sustenance. 

"  You  have  all  heard  of  the  Canadian  preachers, 
268 


PREPARATIONS 

and  I  hope  you  will  all  learn  a  good  deal  more  of 
their  Message  this  very  afternoon  at  the  Albert  Hall, 
where  I  am  to  have  the  honour  of  presiding  over  a 
meeting  which  will  be  addressed  by  these  Christian 
workers  from  across  the  sea." 

We  found  John  Crondall  a  giant  refreshed  after 
his  long  sleep. 

"  I  definitely  promise  you  a  seat  this  afternoon, 
Mrs.  Van  Homrey,"  he  said,  as  we  all  sat  down  to 
lunch  in  the  South  Kensington  flat,  "  but  that's  as 
much  as  I  can  promise.  You  and  I  will  have  to  keep 
our  feet,  Dick,  and  you  will  have  to  share  Lady  Tate's 
seat,  Constance.  If  every  ticket-holder  turns  up  this 
afternoon,  there  won't  be  a  single  vacant  seat  in  the 
whole  of  that  great  hall." 

"  You  earned  your  Sunday  morning  in,  John," 
said  Mrs.  Van  Homrey.  "  Is  the  Prime  Minister 
coming?  " 

"  No,  he  has  failed  me  at  the  last,  but  half  the 
members  of  the  last  Government  will  be  there,  and  I 
have  promises  from  prominent  representatives  of 
every  religious  denomination  in  England.  There  will 
be  sixty  military  officers  above  captain's  rank,  in 
uniform,  and  forty-eight  naval  officers  in  uniform. 
There  will  be  many  scores  of  bluejackets  and  private 
soldiers,  a  hundred  training-ship  lads,  fifty  of  the 
Legion  of  Frontiersmen,  and  a  number  of  volunteers 
all  in  full  uniform.  There  will  be  a  tremendous  num- 
ber of  society  people,  but  the  mass  will  be  leavened, 
and  I  should  say  one-half  the  people  will  be  middle- 
class  folk.  For  to-night,  no  tickets  have  been  issued. 
The  attendance  will  depend  to  some  extent  on  the 

269 


THE    MESSAGE 

success  of  this  afternoon,  but,  to  judge  from  the 
newspapers  and  the  talk  one  hears,  I  should  say  it 
would  be  enormous." 

Just  before  we  left  the  flat  Crondall  told  us  a 
secret. 

"  You  know  they  have  a  volunteer  choir  of  fifty 
voices?  "  he  said.  "  It  was  Stairs's  idea,  and  he  has 
carried  it  out  alone.  The  choir  consists  entirely  of 
bluejackets,  soldiers,  volunteers,  Red  Cross  nurses, 
and  boys  from  the  Army  bands." 


270 


VII 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

Stern  Daughter  of  the  Voice  of  God  I 

O  Duty  !  if  that  name  thou  love 

Who  art  a  light  to  guide,  a  rod 

To  check  the  erring,  and  reprove ; 

Thou  who  art  victory  and  law 

When  empty  terrors  overawe  ; 

From  vain  temptations  dost  set  free, 

And  calm'st  the  weary  strife  of  frail  humanity 

WORDSWORTH'S  Ode  to  Duty. 

I  HAVE  always  been  glad  that  I  was  able  to  attend 
that  first  great  service  of  the  Canadian  preachers ; 
and  so,  I  think,  has  every  one  else  who  was  there. 
Other  services  of  theirs  may  have  been  more  notable 
in  certain  respects  —  indeed,  I  know  they  were ;  but 
this  one  was  the  beginning,  the  first  wave  in  a  great 
tide.  And  I  am  glad  that  I  was  there  to  see  that  first 
grand  wave  rise  upon  the  rock  of  British  apathy. 

I  have  said  something  of  the  audience,  but  a  book 
might  well  be  devoted  to  its  description,  and,  again, 
a  sentence  may  serve.  It  was  a  representative  Eng- 
lish gathering,  in  that  it  embraced  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Family,  a  little  group  of  old  men  and  women 
from  an  asylum  for  the  indigent,  and  members  of 
every  grade  of  society  that  comes  between.  Also,  it 

271 


THE    MESSAGE 

was  a  very  large  gathering  —  even  for  the  Albert 
Hall. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  not  many  weeks  prior 
to  this  Sunday  afternoon,  the  people  of  London, 
maddened  by  hunger,  fear,  and  bewildered  panic,  had 
stormed  Westminster  to  enforce  their  demand  for 
surrender,  and  had  seen  Von  Fiichter  with  his  blood- 
stained legions  take  possession  of  the  capital  of  the 
British  Empire.  Fifty  Londoners  had  been  cut  down, 
almost  in  as  many  seconds,  within  two  miles  of  the 
Mansion  House.  In  one  terrible  week  London  had 
passed  through  an  age  of  terror  and  humiliation,  the 
end  of  which  had  been  purchased  in  panic  and  dis- 
order by  means  of  a  greater  humiliation  than  any. 
Now  England  had  to  pay  the  bill.  Some,  in  the 
pursuit  of  business  and  pleasure,  were  already  for- 
getting; but  the  majority  among  the  great  concourse 
of  Londoners  who  sat  waiting  in  the  Albert  Hall  that 
afternoon,  clothed  in  their  Sunday  best,  were  still 
shrewdly  conscious  of  the  terrible  severity  of  the  blow 
which  had  fallen  upon  England. 

Having  found  Constance  her  half -seat  with  Lady 
Tate,  I  stood  beside  one  of  the  gangways  below  the 
platform,  which  lead  to  the  dressing-rooms  and  other 
offices.  Beside  me  was  a  table  for  Press  representa- 
tives. There,  with  their  pencils,  I  noted  Campbell, 
of  the  Daily  Gazette,  and  other  men  I  knew,  including 
Carew,  for  the  Standard,  who  had  an  assistant  with 
him.  He  told  me  that  somewhere  in  the  hall  his 
paper  had  a  special  descriptive  writer  as  well. 

Looking  up  and  down  that  vast  building,  from 
dome  to  amphitheatre,  I  experienced,  as  it  were  vicari- 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

ously,  something  of  the  nervousness  of  stage  fright. 
Londoners  were  not  simple  prairie  folk,  I  thought. 
How  should  my  friend  George  Stairs  hold  that  multi- 
tude? Two  plain  men  from  Western  Canada,  accus- 
tomed to  minister  to  farmers  and  miners,  what  could 
they  say  to  engage  and  hold  these  serried  thousands 
of  Londoners,  the  most  blase  people  in  England?  I 
had  never  heard  either  of  the  preachers  speak  in 
public,  but  —  I  looked  out  over  that  assemblage,  and 
I  was  horribly  afraid  for  my  friends.  A  Church  of 
England  clergyman  and  a  Nonconformist  minister 
from  Canada,  and  I  told  myself  they  had  never  had  so 
much  as  an  elocution  lesson  between  them! 

And  then  the  Bishop  of  London  appeared  on  the 
crowded  platform,  followed  by  George  Stairs  and 
Arthur  Reynolds ;  and  a  dead  silence  descended  upon 
the  hall.  In  the  forefront  of  the  platform  was  a 
plain  table  with  a  chair  at  either  end  of  it,  and  a 
larger  one  in  the  middle.  Here  the  Bishop  and  the 
two  preachers  placed  themselves.  Then  the  Bishop 
rose  with  right  hand  uplifted,  and  said  solemnly: 

"  May  God  bless  to  us  all  the  Message  which  His 
two  servants  have  brought  us  from  oversea;  for 
Christ's  sake,  Amen." 

George  Stairs  remained  kneeling  at  his  end  of  the 
table.  But  as  the  Bishop  resumed  his  seat  Arthur 
Reynolds  stepped  forward,  and,  pitching  his  voice 
well,  said: 

"  My  friends,  let  us  sing  the  British  Anthem." 

And  at  that  the  great  organ  spoke,  and  the  choir 
of  sailors,  soldiers,  and  nurses  led  the  singing  of  the 
National  Anthem.  The  first  bar  was  sung  by  the 

273 


THE    MESSAGE 

choir  alone,  but  by  the  time  the  third  bar  was  reached 
thousands  among  the  standing  congregation  were 
singing  with  them,  and  the  volume  of  sound  was  most 
impressive.  I  think  that  a  good  many  people  besides 
myself  found  this  solemn  singing  of  the  Anthem, 
from  its  first  line  to  its  last,  something  of  a  revelation. 
It  made  "  God  Save  the  King  "  a  real  prayer  instead 
of  a  musical  intimation  that  hats  might  be  felt  for 
and  carriages  ordered.  It  struck  a  note  which  the 
Canadian  preachers  desired  to  strike.  They  began 
with  a  National  Hymn  which  was  a  prayer  for  King 
and  Country.  The  people  were  at  first  startled,  and 
then  pleased,  and  then  stirred  by  a  departure  from 
all  customs  known  to  them.  And  that  this  should  be 
so  was,  I  apprehend,  the  deliberate  intention  of  the 
Canadian  preachers. 

Still  George  Stairs  knelt  at  his  end  of  the  bare 
table. 

As  the  last  note  of  the  organ  accompaniment  died 
away,  Arthur  Reynolds  stepped  to  the  front. 

"  Will  you  all  pray,  please  ?  "  he  said.  He  closed 
his  eyes  and  extended  one  hand. 

I  cannot  tell  you  what  simple  magic  the  man  used. 
I  know  those  were  his  words.  But  the  compelling 
appeal  in  them  was  most  remarkable.  There  was 
something  childlike  about  his  simple  request.  I  do 
not  think  any  one  could  have  scoffed  at  the  man. 
After  a  minute's  silence,  he  prayed  aloud,  and  this  is 
what  he  said: 

"  Father  in  Heaven,  give  us  strength  to  under- 
stand our  duty  and  to  do  it.  Thou  knowest  that  two 
of  the  least  among  Thy  servants  have  crossed  the  sea 

274 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

to  give  a  Message  to  their  kinsmen  in  England.  Our 
kinsmen  are  a  great  and  proud  people,  and  we,  as 
Thou  knowest,  are  but  very  simple  men.  But  our 
Message  is  from  Thee,  and  with  Thee  all  things  are 
possible.  Father,  have  pity  upon  our  weakness  to- 
day. Open  to  us  the  hearts  of  even  the  proudest  and 
the  greatest  of  our  kinsmen.  Do  not  let  them  scorn 
us.  And,  O  Father  of  all  men,  gentle  and  simple, 
breathe  Thou  upon  us  that  we  may  have  a  strength 
not  of  ourselves ;  a  power  worthy  of  the  Message  we 
bring,  which  shall  make  its  truth  to  shine  so  that 
none  may  mistake  it.  For  Christ's  sake.  Amen." 

Arthur  Reynolds  resumed  his  seat,  and  a  great 
Australian  singer,  a  prima  donna  of  world-wide  re- 
pute, stepped  forward  very  simply  and  sang  as  a 
solo  the  hymn  beginning : 

Church  of  the  Living  God, 
Pillar  and  ground  of  truth, 
Keep  the  old  paths  the  fathers  trod 
In  thy  illumined  youth. 

The  prayer  had  softened  all  hearts  by  its  sim- 
plicity, its  humility.  The  exquisitely  rendered 
hymn  attuned  all  minds  to  thoughts  of  ancient, 
simple  piety,  and  the  traditions  which  guided  and 
inspired  our  race  in  the  past.  When  it  was  ended, 
and  not  till  then,  George  Stairs  rose  from  his  knees, 
and  stepped  forward  to  where  a  little  temporary  ex- 
tension jutted  out  beyond  the  rest  of  the  platform. 
He  stood  there  with  both  hands  by  his  side,  and  a 
Bible  held  in  one  of  them.  His  head  inclined  a  little 
forward.  It  was  an  attitude  suggestive  rather  of 

275 


THE    MESSAGE 

submission  to  that  great  assembly,  or  to  some  Power 
above  it,  than  of  exhortation.  Watching  him  as  he 
stood  there,  I  realized  what  a  fine  figure  of  a  man 
George  was,  how  well  and  surely  Canadian  life  had 
developed  him.  His  head  was  massive,  his  hair  thick 
and  very  fair;  his  form  lithe,  tall,  full  of  muscular 
elasticity. 

He  stood  so,  silent,  for  a  full  minute,  till  I  began 
to  catch  my  breath  from  nervousness.  Then  he 
opened  the  Bible,  and: 

"  May  I  just  read  you  a  few  verses  from  the 
Bible?"  he  said. 

There  was  the  same  directness,  the  same  simple, 
almost  childlike  appeal  that  had  touched  the  people 
in  Reynolds's  prayer.  He  read  some  verses  from  the 
First  Book  of  Samuel.  I  remember: 

"  '  And  did  I  choose  him  out  of  all  the  tribes  of 
Israel  to  be  my  priest,  to  offer  upon  mine  altar,  to 
burn  incense,  to  wear  an  ephod  before  me?  And  did 
I  give  unto  the  house  of  thy  father  all  the  offerings 
made  by  fire  of  the  children  of  Israel?  Wherefore 
kick  ye  at  my  sacrifice  and  at  mine  offering,  which  I 
have  commanded  in  my  habitation ;  and  honouredst 
thy  sons  above  me  to  make  yourselves  fat  with  the 
chief est  of  all  the  offerings  of  Israel,  my  people? 
Wherefore  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  saith,  I  said  indeed 
that  thy  house  and  the  house  of  thy  father  should 
walk  before  me  for  ever ;  but  now  the  Lord  saith,  be 
it  far  from  me;  for  them  that  honour  me  I  will 
honour,  and  them  that  despise  me  shall  be  lightly 
esteemed.  Behold  the  day  is  come,  that  I  will  cut 
off  thine  arm,  and  the  arm  of  thy  father's  house,  and 

276 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

there  shall  not  be  an  old  man  in  my  house.  And  thou 
shalt  see  an  enemy  in  my  habitation,  in  all  the  wealth 
which  God  shall  give  Israel.  .  .  .  And  I  will  raise 
me  up  a  faithful  priest,  that  shall  do  according  to 
that  which  is  in  mine  heart  and  in  my  mind.  .  .  .": 

There  was  a  pause,  and  then  the  preacher  read  a 
passage  from  Judges,  ending  with  the  famous  war- 
cry  :  "  The  Sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon."  He 
looked  up  then,  and,  without  reference  to  the  Bible 
in  his  hand,  repeated  several  verses: 

"  '  And  by  thy  sword  thou  shalt  live,  and  shalt 
serve  thy  brother :  and  it  shall  come  to  pass  when  thou 
shalt  have  the  dominion,  that  thou  shalt  break  his 
yoke  from  off  thy  neck.' 

"  '  He  that  hath  no  sword,  let  him  sell  his  garment 
and  buy  one.' 

"  *  For  he  beareth  not  the  sword  in  vain :  for  he  is 
the  minister  of  God,  a  revenger  to  execute  wrath  upon 
him  that  doeth  evil.' 

"  '  And  take  the  helmet  of  salvation,  and  the  Sword 
of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the  Word  of  God.' 

"  '  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  send  peace  on 
earth ;  I  came  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword.'  Not 
the  peace  of  indolence  and  dishonour ;  not  the  fatted 
peace  of  mercenary  well-being;  but  a  Sword;  the 
Sword  of  the  Lord,  the  Sword  of  Duty,  which  creates, 
establishes,  and  safeguards  the  only  true  peace  — 
the  peace  of  honourable  peoples." 

I  remember  his  slow  turning  of  leaves  in  his  Bible, 
and  I  remember: 

"  '  Let  us  hear  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter: 
Fear  God,  and  keep  His  commandments,  for  this  is 

277 


THE    MESSAGE 

the  whole  duty  of  man  —  '  the  whole  duty 

Yes,  '  but  isn't  Duty  rather  an  early  Victorian  sort 
of  business,  and  a  bit  out  of  date,  anyhow?  '  That 
was  what  a  young  countryman  of  mine  —  from  Dor- 
set, he  came  —  said  to  me  in  Calgary,  last  year.  I 
told  him  that,  according  to  my  reading  of  history, 
it  had  come  down  a  little  farther  than  early  Victorian 
days.  I  remember  I  mentioned  Rorke's  Drift;  and 
he  rather  liked  that.  But,  of  course,  I  knew  what  he 
meant." 

It  was  in  this  very  simple  strain,  without  a  gesture, 
without  a  trace  of  dramatic  appeal,  that  George 
Stairs  began  to  address  that  great  gathering.  Much 
has  been  said  and  written  of  the  quality  of  revelation 
which  was  instinct  in  that  first  address  ;  of  its  compel- 
ling force,  its  inspired  strength,  the  convincing  di- 
rectness of  it  all.  And  I  should  be  the  last  to  deny 
to  my  old  friend's  address  any  of  the  praises  lavished 
upon  it  by  high  and  low.  But  what  I  would  say  of  it 
is  that,  even  now,  sufficient  emphasis  and  import  are 
never  attached  to  the  most  compelling  quality  of  all 
in  George  Stairs's  words :  their  absolutely  unaffected 
simplicity.  I  think  a  ten-year-old  child  could  have 
followed  his  every  word  with  perfect  understanding. 

Nowadays  we  take  a  fair  measure  of  simplicity  for 
granted.  Anything  less  would  condemn  a  man  as  a 
fool  or  a  mountebank.  But  be  it  remembered  that 
the  key-note  and  most  striking  feature  of  all  recent 
progress  has  been  the  advance  toward  simplicity  in  all 
things.  At  the  period  of  George  Stairs's  first  exposi- 
tion of  the  new  evangel  in  the  Albert  Hall,  we  were 
not  greatly  given  to  simplicity.  It  was  scarcely 

278 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

noticeable  at  that  time  even  among  tillers  of  the  earth. 
Not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  we  were  a  tinselled 
lot  of  mimes,  greatly  given  to  apishness,  and  shun- 
ning naked  truth  as  though  it  were  the  plague.  Past 
masters  in  compromise  and  self-delusion,  we  had 
stripped  ourselves  of  simplicity  in  every  detail  of  life, 
and,  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  seemed  willingly 
to  be  hedged  about  with  every  kind  of  complexity. 
We  so  maltreated  our  physical  palates  that  they  re- 
sponded only  to  flavours  which  would  have  alarmed 
a  plain-living  man;  and,  metaphorically,  the  same 
thing  held  good  in  every  concern  of  our  lives,  until 
simplicity  became  non-existent  among  us,  and  was 
forgotten.  There  were  men  and  women  in  that  Sunr- 
day  afternoon  gathering  at  the  Albert  Hall  whose 
very  pleasures  were  a  complicated  and  laborious  art, 
whose  pastimes  were  a  strain  upon  the  nervous  sys- 
tem, whose  leisure  was  quite  an  arduous  business. 

This  it  was  which  gave  such  striking  freshness, 
such  compelling  strength,  to  the  simple,  forthright 
directness,  the  unaffected  earnestness  and  modesty  of 
the  Message  brought  us  by  the  Canadian  preachers. 
The  most  bumptious  and  self-satisfied  Cockney  who 
ever  heard  the  ringing  of  Bow  Bells,  would  have  found 
resentment  impossible  after  George  Stairs's  little  ac- 
count of  his  leaving  Dorset  as  a  boy  of  twelve,  and 
picking  up  such  education  as  he  had,  while  learning 
how  to  milk  cows,  bed  down  horses,  split  fire-wood,  and 
perform  "  chores  "  generally,  on  a  Canadian  farm. 
Even  during  his  theological  course,  vacations  had 
found  him  in  the  harvest  field. 

"  You  may  guess  my  diffidence,  then,"  he  said,  "  in 
279 


THE    MESSAGE 

lifting  up  my  voice  before  such  a  gathering  as  this, 
here  in  the  storied  heart  of  the  Empire,  the  city  I 
have  reverenced  my  life  long  as  the  centre  of  the 
world's  intelligence.  But  there  is  not  a  man  or  woman 
here  to-day  who  would  chide  a  lad  who  came  home 
from  school  with  tidings  of  something  he  had  learned 
there.  That  is  my  case,  precisely.  I  have  been  to 
one  of  our  outside  schools,  from  my  home  here  in  this 
beloved  island.  Home  and  school  alike,  they  are  all 
part  of  our  family  heritage  —  yours  and  mine.  I 
only  bring  you  your  own  word  from  another  part  of 
our  own  place.  That  is  my  sole  claim  to  stand  before 
you  to-day.  Yet,  when  I  think  of  it,  it  satisfies  me; 
it  safeguards  me  from  the  effect  of  misunderstanding 
or  offence,  so  long  as  my  hearers  are  of  my  kin  — 
British." 

His  description  of  Canada  and  the  life  he  had  lived 
there  occupied  us  for  no  more  than  ten  minutes,  at 
the  outside.  It  has  appeared  in  so  many  books  that  I 
will  not  attempt  to  quote  that  little  masterpiece  of 
illumination.  But  by  no  means  every  reproduction  of 
this  passage  adds  the  simple  little  statement  which 
divided  it  from  its  successor. 

"  That  has  been  my  life.  No  brilliant  qualities  are 
demanded  of  a  man  in  such  a  life.  The  one  thing 
demanded  is  that  he  shall  do  his  duty.  You  remem- 
ber that  passage  in  Ecclesiastes  —  '  The  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter '  ?  " 

And  then  came  the  story  of  Edward  Hare.  That 
moved  the  people  deeply. 

"  My  first  curacy  was  in  Southern  Manitoba. 
When  I  was  walking  from  the  church  to  the  farm- 

280 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

house  where  I  lodged,  after  morning  service,  one  per- 
fect day  in  June,  I  passed  a  man  called  Edward  Hare, 
sitting  at  the  edge  of  a  little  bluff,  on  a  rising  piece 
of  ground.  I  had  felt  drawn  toward  this  man.  He 
was  a  Londoner,  and,  in  his  first  two  years,  had  had 
a  tough  fight.  But  he  had  won  through,  and  now 
had  just  succeeded  in  adding  a  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  to  his  little  farm,  which  was  one  of  the  most 
prosperous  in  the  district. 

"  '  I  didn't  see  you  at  church  this  morning,  Hare,' 
I  said,  after  we  had  chatted  a  minute  or  two. 

"  *  No,'  said  he ;  'I  wasn't  at  church.  I've  been 
here  by  this  bluff  since  breakfast,  and  —  Parson ! ' 
he  said,  with  sudden  emphasis,  *  I  shall  give  up  the 
farm.  I'm  going  back  Home.' 

"  Well,  of  course,  I  was  surprised,  and  pressed 
him  for  reasons.  '  Well,'  he  said,  *  I  don't  know  as  I 
can  make  much  of  a  show  of  reasons ;  but  I'm  going. 
Did  you  notice  anything  special  about  the  weather, 
or  —  or  that,  this  morning,  Parson?'  I  told  him  I 
had  only  noticed  that  it  was  a  very  sweet,  clear,  happy 
sort  of  a  morning.  '  That's  just  it,  Parson,'  he  said ; 
*  sweet  and  clear  and  clean  it  is ;  and  I  don't  believe 
there's  any  sweeter,  cleaner  thing  than  this  morning 
on  my  farm  —  no,  not  in  heaven,  Parson,'  he  said. 
1  And  that's  why  I'm  going  back  Home  to  London  ;  to 
Battersea;  that's  where  I  lived  before  I  came  here.' 

"  I  waited  for  him  to  tell  me  more,  and  presently 
he  said :  '  You  know,  Parson,  I  was  never  what  you 
might  call  a  drunkard,  not  even  at  Home,  where 
drinkin's  the  regular  thing.  But  I  used  to  get 
through  a  tidy  lot  of  liquor,  one  way  and  another, 

281 


THE    MESSAGE 

and  most  generally  two  or  three  pints  too  many  of  a 
Saturday  night.  Then,  of  a  Sunday  morning,  the 
job  was  waiting  for  the  pubs  to  open.  Nobody  in 
our  street  ever  did  much  else  of  a  Sunday.  I  sup- 
pose you  don't  happen  to  have  ever  been  down  the 
Falcon  Road  of  a  Sunday  morning,  Parson?  No? 
Well,  you  see,  the  street's  a  kind  of  market  all  Satur- 
day night,  up  till  long  after  midnight  —  costers' 
barrows  with  flare-lights,  gin-shops  full  to  the  door, 
and  all  the  fun  of  the  fair  —  all  the  fun  of  the  fair. 
Mothers  and  fathers,  lads  and  sweethearts,  babies  in 
prams,  and  toddlers  in  blue  plush  and  white  wool; 
you  see  them  all  crowding  the  bars  up  till  midnight, 
and  they  see  —  well,  they  see  Battersea  through  a 
kind  of  a  bright  gaze.  Then  comes  Sunday,  and  a 
dry  throat,  and  waiting  for  the  pubs  to  open.  The 
streets  are  all  a  litter  of  dirty  newspaper  and  cab- 
bage-stumps, and  worse;  and  the  air's  kind  of  sick 
and  stale.' 

"  At  that  Hare  stopped  talking,  and  looked  out 
over  the  prairie  on  that  June  morning.  Presently  he 
went  on  again :  '  Well,  Parson,  when  I  came  out  here 
this  morning  —  I  haven't  tasted  beer  for  over  three 
years  —  I  sat  down  and  looked  around ;  and,  some- 
how, I  thought  I'd  never  seen  anything  so  fine  in  all 
my  life ;  so  sweet  and  clean ;  the  air  so  bright,  like 
dew ;  and  green  —  well,  look  at  it,  far  as  your  eye 
can  carry !  And  all  this  round,  away  to  the  bluff 
there,  and  the  creek  this  way;  it's  mine,  every  foot 
of  it.  Well,  after  a  bit,  I  was  looking  over  there  to 
the  church,  and  what  d'ye  think  I  saw,  all  through 
the  pretty  sunlight?  I  saw  the  Falcon  Road,  a  pub 

282 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

I  know  there,  and  a  streak  of  sunshine  running  over 
the  wire  blinds  into  the  bar,  all  frowsy  and  shut  in, 
with  the  liquor  stains  over  everything.  And  outside, 
I  saw  the  pasty-faced  crowd  waiting  to  get  in,  and 
all  the  Sunday  litter  in  the  road.  Parson,  I  got  the 
smell  of  it,  the  sick,  stale  smell  of  it,  right  here  —  in 
Paradise;  I  got  the  frowsy  smell  of  it,  and  heard 
the  waily  children  squabbling,  and  —  I  can't  tell  you 
any  more  of  what  I  saw.  If  you'd  ever  seen  it,  you'd 
know.' 

"  And  there  he  stopped  again,  until  I  moved.  Then 
he  said :  '  Parson,  if  you  saw  a  fellow  starving  on  a 
bit  of  land  over  there  that  wouldn't  feed  a  prairie- 
chick,  and  you  knew  of  a  free  homestead  across  the 
creek,  where  he  could  raise  five  and  twenty  bushels  to 
the  acre  and  live  like  a  man,  would  you  leave  him  to 
rot  on  his  bare  patch?  Not  you.  That's  why  I'm 
going  Home  —  to  Battersea.' 

"  If  Hare  had  been  a  married  man  I  might  have 
advised  him  otherwise.  But  he  was  married  only  to 
the  farm  he  had  wrought  so  well,  and  it  did  not  seem 
to  me  part  of  my  business  to  come  between  a  man  and 
his  duty  —  as  he  saw  it.  That  man  came  Home,  and 
took  the  cheapest  lodging  he  could  get  in  Battersea. 
He  had  sold  his  farm  well.  Now  he  took  to  street 
preaching,  and  what  he  preached  was,  not  religion, 
but  the  prairie.  *  Lord  sake,  young  folk  ! '  he  used 
to  say  to  the  lads  and  girls  when  they  turned  toward 
the  public-houses.  *  Hold  on !  Wait  a  minute !  I 
want  to  tell  you  something ! '  And  he  would  tell  them 
what  four  years'  clean  work  had  given  him  in  Can- 
ada. 

283 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  He  got  into  touch  with  various  emigration  agen- 
cies. The  money  he  had  lasted  him,  living  as  he  did, 
for  five  years.  In  that  time  he  was  the  means  of 
sending  nine  hundred  and  twenty  men  and  five  hun- 
dred and  forty  women  and  girls  to  a  free  and  inde- 
pendent life  in  Canada.  Just  before  his  money  was 
exhausted,  England's  affliction,  England's  chastise- 
ment, came  upon  her  like  God's  anger  in  a  thunder- 
bolt. Hare  had  meant  to  return  to  Canada  to  make 
another  start,  and  earn  money  enough  to  return  to 
his  work  here.  Instead  of  that,  my  friends,  instead 
of  what  he  called  Paradise  in  Manitoba,  God  took  him 
straight  into  Heaven.  He  left  his  body  beside  the 
North  London  entrenchments,  where,  so  one  of  his 
comrades  told  me,  he  fought  like  ten  men  for  Eng- 
land, knowing  well  that,  if  captured,  he  would  be 
shot  out  of  hand  as  a  civilian  bearing  arms.  One  may 
say  of  Edward  Hare,  I  think,  tljat  he  saw  his  duty 
very  clearly  —  and  did  it. 


"  But  what  of  us  ?  What  of  you,  and  I,  my 
friends  ?  How  do  we  stand  regarding  Duty  ?  " 

I  never  heard  such  questions  in  my  life.  He  had 
been  speaking  smoothly,  evenly,  calmly,  and  without 
gesticulation.  With  the  questions,  his  body  was  bent 
as  though  for  a  leap ;  his  hands  flung  forward. 
These  questions  left  him  like  bullets.  It  was  as 
though  that  great  hall  had  been  in  blackest  darkness, 
and  with  a  sudden  movement  the  speaker  had  switched 
on  ten  thousand  electric  lights.  I  saw  men  rise  to  a 

284 


half-erect  posture.  I  heard  women  catch  their  breath. 
The  air  of  the  place  seemed  all  aquiver. 

"  My  friends,  will  you  please  pray  with  me?  " 

He  leaned  forward,  an  appeal  in  every  line  of  his 
figure,  addressed  confidentially  to  each  soul  present. 
Then  his  right  hand  rose: 

"  Please  God,  help  me  to  give  my  Message !  Please 
God,  open  London's  heart  to  hear  my  Message ! 
Please  God,  give  me  strength  to  tell  it  —  now !  For 
Christ's  sake.  Amen  !  " 

One  heard  a  low,  emphatic,  and  far-carrying 
"  Amen  !  "  from  the  lips  of  London's  Bishop ;  and  I 
think  that,  too,  meant  something  to  the  great  con- 
gregation of  Londoners  assembled  there. 

Immediately  then,  it  was,  while  the  electric  thrill  of 
his  questions  and  the  simple  prayer  still  held  all  his 
audience  at  high  tension,  that  George  Stairs  plunged 
into  the  famous  declaration  of  the  new  evangel  of 
Duty  and  Simplicity.  If  any  man  in  the  world  has 
learned  for  himself  that  prayer  is  efficacious,  that 
man  is  the  Rev.  George  Stairs.  For  it  is  now  univer- 
sally admitted  that  such  winged  words  as  those  of  his 
first  great  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  Duty  and 
simple  living,  the  doctrine  which  has  placed  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples  in  the  forefront  of  Christen- 
dom, had  never  before  thrilled  an  English  audience. 

His  own  words  were  a  perfect  example  of  the  in- 
vincible virtue  of  simplicity ;  his  presence  there  was 
a  glowing  evidence  of  the  force  of  Duty.  It  is  quite 
certain  that  the  knowledge  shown  in  his  flashing 
summary  of  nineteenth-century  English  history  was 
not  knowledge  based  upon  experience.  But  neither 

285 


THE    MESSAGE 

the  poets,  nor  the  most  learned  historians,  nor  the 
most  erudite  of  naval  experts,  has  ever  given  a  pic- 
ture so  instantly  convincing  as  the  famous  passage 
of  his  oration  which  showed  us,  first,  the  British  Fleet 
on  the  morning  of  Trafalgar;  then,  Nelson  going 
into  action;  then,  the  great  sailor's  dying  apotheosis 
of  Duty;  and,  finally,  England's  reception  of  her 
dead  hero's  body.  The  delivery  of  this  much-quoted 
passage  was  a  matter  of  moments  only,  but  from 
where  I  stood  I  saw  streaming  eyes  in  women's  faces, 
and  that  stiff,  unwinking  stare  on  men's  faces  which 
indicates  tense  effort  to  restrain  emotion. 

And  so,  with  a  fine  directness  and  simplicity  of 
progress,  he  carried  us  down  through  the  century  to 
its  stormy  close,  with  vivid  words  of  tribute  for  the 
sturdy  pioneers  of  Victorian  reform  who  fought  for 
and  built  the  freest  democracy  in  the  world,  and  gave 
us  the  triumphant  enlightenment  which  illumined 
Victoria's  first  Jubilee. 

"  '  But  isn't  Duty  a  rather  early  Victorian  sort  of 
business,  and  out  of  date,  anyhow  ?  '  said  my  young 
countryman  in  Calgary.  To  the  first  half  of  his 
question  there  can  be  no  answer  but  '  Yes.'  To  deny 
it  were  to  slander  our  fathers  most  cruelly.  But  what 
of  the  question's  second  half?  Our  fathers  have  no 
concern  with  the  answering  of  that.  Is  Duty  '  out  of 
date,'  my  friends?  If  so,  let  us  burn  our  churches. 
If  so,  let  the  bishops  resign  their  bishoprics.  If  so, 
let  us  lower  for  ever  the  flag  which  our  fathers  made 
sacred  from  pole  to  pole.  If  so,  let  Britain  admit  — 
as  well  first  as  last  —  that  she  has  retired  for  ever 
from  her  proud  place  among  the  nations,  and  is  no 

286 


THE    SWORD    OF    THE    LORD 

more  to  be  accounted  a  Power  in  Christendom ;  for 
that  is  no  place  for  a  people  with  whom  Duty  is  out 
of  date. 

"  '  And  did  I  choose  him  out  of  all  the  tribes  of 
Israel  to  be  my  priest,  to  offer  upon  mine  altar  ?  .  .  . 
But  now  the  Lord  saith,  Be  it  far  from  me,  for  them 
that  honour  me  I  will  honour,  and  them  that  despise 
me  shall  be  lightly  esteemed.  Behold  the  days  come 
that  I  will  cut  off  thine  arm!  '  " 

It  was  almost  unbearable.  No  one  had  guessed  the 
man  had  such  a  voice.  He  had  recited  that  passage 
quietly.  Then  came  the  rolling  thunder  of  the: 
"  Behold  the  days  come  that  I  will  cut  off  thine 
arm !  "  A  woman  in  the  centre  of  the  hall  cried  aloud, 
upon  a  high  note.  The  roar  of  German  artillery  in 
North  London  never  stirred  Londoners  as  this  par- 
ticular sentence  of  God's  Word  stirred  them  in  the 
Albert  Hall. 

And  then,  in  a  voice  keyed  down  again  to  calm  and 
tender  wisdom,  the  words  of  the  Scriptural  poet  stole 
out  over  the  heads  of  the  perturbed  people,  stilling 
their  minds  once  more  into  the  right  receptive  vein: 
"  '  Let  us  hear  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter : 
Fear  God  and  keep  His  commandments,  for  this  is  the 
whole  duty  of  man.' ' 

Like  balm,  the  stately  words  fell  upon  the  people, 
as  a  light  to  lighten  their  darkness,  as  an  end  and  a 
solution  to  a  situation  found  intolerable.  But,  though 
calm  resolve  was  in  George  Stairs's  gift  that  day,  he 
suffered  no  complaisance;  and,  by  this  time,  he  held 
that  great  assembly  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand.  It  was 
then  he  dealt  with  the  character  of  our  own  century, 

281 


THE     MESSAGE 

as  distinguished  from  that  of  the  Victorian  era.  It 
was  then  his  words  taught  me,  personally,  more  than 
all  he  had  said  besides. 

I  will  not  quote  from  a  passage  which  has  been 
incorporated  in  hundreds  of  school-books.  It  is  gen- 
erally admitted  that  the  end  and  purpose  underlying 
the  civil  and  national  code  of  our  age  has  never  since 
been  more  admirably  stated  than  on  the  day  of  its 
first  enunciation  in  the  Albert  Hall  by  George  Stairs. 
His  words  were  glowing  when  he  showed  us  how  the 
key-note  of  our  fathers'  age  had  been  the  claiming 
and  establishing  of  rights  and  privileges.  His  words 
stung  like  whip-thongs  when  he  depicted  our  greedy, 
self-satisfied  enjoyment  of  those  rights  and  privi- 
leges, with  never  a  thought,  either  of  the  various 
obligations  pertaining  to  them,  or  of  our  plain  duty 
in  the  conservation  for  our  children  of  all  that  had 
been  won  for  us.  Finally,  his  words  were  living  fire 
of  incentive,  red  wine  of  stimulation,  when  he  urged 
upon  us  the  twentieth-century  watchword  of  Duty, 
and  the  loyal  discharge  of  obligations. 

"  Theirs,  an  age  crowned  by  well-won  triumph,  was 
the  century  of  claimant  demand;  ours  is  the  century 
of  grateful  obedience.  Theirs  was  the  age  of  claims ; 
ours  the  age  of  Duty.  Theirs  the  century  of  rights ; 
ours  the  century  of  Duty.  Theirs  the  period  of 
brave,  insistent  constructive  effort;  ours  the  period 
of  Duty  —  Duty  —  Duty! 

"  In  fighting  to  obtain  all  that  they  won  for  us, 
our  fathers  pledged  themselves  —  and  us  —  to  be  fit 
recipients,  true  freemen.  For  a  moment,  misled  by 
the  glare  of  wealth  and  pleasure,  we  have  played  the 

288 


THE    PREACHERS 

caitiff's  part ;  grasped  freemen's  privileges,  without 
thanks,  and  with  repudiation  of  the  balancing  duties 
and  obligations  without  which  no  rights  can  survive. 
And  — '  Behold,  the  days  come  that  I  will  cut  off 
thine  arm ! ' 

"  The  God  of  our  fathers  trusted  them,  in  our 
behalf;  and  we  played  traitor.  So  God  smote  Eng- 
land, through  the  arrogant  war-lords  of  another 
people.  That  blow,  self-administered,  is  Heaven's 
last  warning  to  England.  In  truth,  the  blow  was 
ours,  yours  and  mine ;  we  ourselves  it  was  who  played 
the  traitor  and  struck  a  cruel  blow  at  Britain's  heart. 
Unworthy  sons  of  valiant  sires,  we  snatched  our 
wages  and  shirked  our  work ;  seized  the  reward  and 
refused  the  duty.  God  in  His  mercy  gave  us  many 
warnings ;  but  we  hid  our  faces  and  pursued  our 
selfish  ends.  '  Behold,  the  days  come ' 

"  But  God  stayed  His  hand.  England  lies  bloody 
but  unbroken.  There  can  be  no  more  warnings.  The 
time  for  warnings  has  gone  by.  There  can  be  no 
more  paltering.  Now  is  the  day  of  final  choice.  Will 
ye  be  men  —  or  helots  and  outcasts  ?  Will  you  choose 
Duty,  and  the  favour  of  God's  appointed  way  for  us, 
of  progress  and  of  leadership ;  or  will  you  choose  — 
pleasure,  swift  decay,  annihilation  ?  Upon  your  heads 
be  it !  Our  fathers  nobly  did  their  part.  Upon  your 
choice  hangs  the  future  of  our  race,  the  fate  of  your 
children,  the  destiny  of  God's  chosen  people,  who  have 
paltered  with  strange  gods,  blasphemed  the  true 
faith,  and  stepped  aside  from  the  white  path  —  the 
Only  Way :  Duty !  " 

He  turned,  raising  one  hand,  and  the  notes  of  the 
289 


THE    MESSAGE 

great  organ  rose  and  swelled  mightily,  filling  the  hall 
with  the  strains  of  the  British  National  Anthem. 
Every  soul  in  the  building  stood  erect,  and  following 
the  choir's  lead,  that  great  gathering  sang  the  Brit- 
ish hymn  as  it  was  never  sung  before.  As  the  last 
note  throbbed  into  silence  in  the  hall's  dome,  George 
Stairs,  who  had  knelt  through  the  singing  of  the 
anthem,  advanced,  with  hand  uplifted. 

"  God  helping  us,  as,  if  we  choose  aright,  He  surely 
will  help  us,  do  we  choose  Duty,  or  pleasure  ?  Choose, 
my  kinsmen!  Is  it  Duty,  or  is  it  pleasure?  " 

It  was  a  severe  test  to  put  to  such  an  assembly,  to 
a  congregation  of  all  classes  of  London  society. 
There  was  a  moment  of  silence  in  which  I  saw  George 
Stairs's  face,  white  and  writhen,  through  a  mist  which 
seemed  to  cloud  my  vision.  And  then  the  answer 
came,  like  a  long,  rolling  clap  of  thunder: 

"  Duty ! " 

And  I  saw  George  Stairs  fall  upon  his  knees  in 
prayer,  as  the  Bishop  dismissed  the  people  with  a 
benediction,  delivered  somewhat  brokenly,  in  a  hoarse 
voice. 


290 


VIII 

THE    PREACHERS 

There  are  who  ask  not  if  thine  eye 
Be  on  them  ;  who  in  love  and  truth 
Where  no  misgiving  is,  rely 
Upon  the  genial  sense  of  youth  : 
Glad  hearts!  without  reproach  or  blot, 
Who  do  thy  work,  and  know  it  not : 
O!  if  through  confidence  misplaced 
They  fail,  thy  saving  arms,  dread  Power!  around  them  cast. 

Ode  to  Duty. 

IT  was  with  something  of  a  shock  that  I  learned, 
while  endeavouring  to  make  my  way  through  a 
dense  crowd  to  the  Canadian  preacher's  dressing- 
room,  that  my  friend,  George  Stairs,  was  lying  un- 
conscious in  a  fainting  fit.  But  my  anxiety  was  not 
long-lived.  Several  doctors  had  volunteered  their 
services,  and  from  one  of  them  I  learned  that  the 
fainting  fit  was  no  more  than  the  momentary  result 
of  an  exceptional  strain  of  excitement. 

Within  half  an  hour,  Stairs  and  Reynolds  were 
both  resting  comfortably  in  a  private  sitting-room  at 
a  neighbouring  hotel,  and  there  I  visited  them,  with 
Constance  Grey  and  Mrs.  Van  Homrey,  and  John 
Crondall.  Stairs  assured  us  that  his  fainting  was  of 
no  consequence,  and  that  he  felt  perfectly  fit  and  well 
again. 

291 


THE    MESSAGE 

"  You  see  it  was  something  of  an  ordeal  for  me, 
a  nobody  from  nowhere,  to  face  such  an  assembly." 

"  Well,"  said  John  Crondall,  "  I  suppose  that  at 
this  moment  there  is  not  a  man  in  London  who  is 
much  more  a  somebody,  and  less  a  nobody  from  no- 
where." 

"  You  think  we  succeeded,  then  ?  " 

"  My  dear  fellow !  I  think  your  address  of  this 
afternoon  was  the  most  important  event  England  has 
known  this  century.  Mark  my  words,  that  great 
thunder  of  '  Duty ! '  that  you  drew  from  them  — 
from  a  London  audience,  mind  —  is  to  have  more  far- 
reaching  results  for  the  British  Empire  than  the 
acquisition  of  a  continent." 

"  No,  no,  my  dear  Crondall,  you  surely  overrate 
the  thing,"  said  Stairs,  warm  colour  spreading  over 
his  pale  face. 

"  Well,  you  can  take  my  deliberate  assurance  that 
in  my  opinion  you  achieved  more  for  your  country 
this  afternoon  than  it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to 
achieve  in  the  whole  of  a  rather  busy  life." 

Stairs  protested,  blushing  like  a  girl.  But  we 
know  now  that,  so  far  at  all  events  as  his  remarks 
were  prophetic,  John  Crondall  was  absolutely  right ; 
though  whether  or  not  the  new  evangel  could  have 
achieved  what  it  did  without  the  invasion  is  another 
matter. 

Myself,  I  believe  nothing  could  have  been  more 
triumphantly  successful,  more  prenant  with  great 
possibilities  for  good,  than  the  event  of  that  after- 
noon. Yet  I  was  assured  that  fully  two  thousand 
five  hundred  more  people  crowded  into  the  hall  for 

292 


THE    PREACHERS 

the  evening  service  than  had  been  there  to  hear 
Stairs's  address.  And  I  had  thought  the  huge  place 
crowded  in  the  afternoon.  As  before,  the  service 
began  and  ended  with  the  National  Anthem ;  but  in 
the  evening  the  great  assembly  was  thrilled  to  its 
heart  by  the  Australian  prima  donna's  splendid  sing- 
ing of  Wordsworth's  Ode  to  Duty  in  the  setting  spe- 
cially composed  for  this  occasion  by  Doctor  Elgar. 

I  saw  very  many  faces  that  I  had  seen  at  the  first 
service,  but  I  believe  that  there  was  a  far  greater 
proportion  of  poorer  folk  present  than  there  had  been 
in  the  afternoon.  The  President  of  the  Congrega- 
tional Union  presided,  and  the  address  was  delivered 
by  Arthur  Reynolds. 

As  with  Stairs,  so  with  Reynolds,  Duty  was  the 
gist  and  heart  of  the  Message  delivered  —  Duty, 
plain  living,  simplicity ;  these  they  both  urged  to  be 
the  root  of  the  whole  matter.  Both  men  gave  sub- 
stantially the  same  Message,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
of  that;  but  there  were  differences,  and  upon  the 
whole  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Reynolds's  address 
was  more  perfectly  adapted  to  his  hearers  than 
Stairs's  would  have  been  if  his  had  been  given  that 
evening.  Reynolds's  diction  in  public  speaking  was 
not  quite  his  conversational  speech,  because  nothing 
like  slang,  nothing  altogether  colloquial  crept  into  it, 
but  its  simplicity  was  notable;  it  was  the  diction  of 
a  frank,  earnest  child.  There  were  none  of  the  stere- 
otyped phrases  of  piety ;  yet  I  never  heard  a  more 
truly  pious  and  deeply  religious  discourse. 

The  social  and  political  aspects  of  Duty  were  more 
cursorily  treated  by  Reynolds  than  its  moral  and 

293 


THE    MESSAGE 

religious  aspect.  There  was  nothing  heterodox  in  the 
view  put  forward  by  this  preacher  from  oversea.  A 
man  may  find  salvation  in  this  world  and  the  next 
through  love  and  faith,  he  said  in  effect;  but  the 
love  and  faith  must  be  of  the  right  sort.  The  re- 
demption of  the  world  was  the  world's  greatest  mira- 
cle; but  it  did  not  offer  mankind  salvation  in  return 
for  a  given  measure  of  psalm-singing,  sentimental- 
izing, and  prayerful  prostrations.  Christianity  was 
something  which  had  to  be  lived,  not  merely  contem- 
plated. Love  and  faith  were  all-sufficient,  but  they 
must  be  the  true  love  and  faith,  of  which  Duty  was 
the  legitimate  offspring.  The  man  who  thought  that 
any  form  of  piety  which  permitted  the  neglect  of 
Duty,  would  win  him  either  true  peace  in  this  life  or 
salvation  in  the  next,  was  as  pitifully  misled  as  the 
man  who  indulged  himself  in  a  vicious  life  with  a  view 
to  repentance  when  he  should  be  too  near  his  demise 
to  care  for  indulgence. 

"  But,  even  if  one  could  put  aside  all  thought  of 
God  and  the  life  compared  with  which  this  life  is  but 
an  instant  of  time ;  even  then  there  would  be  nothing 
left  really  worth  serious  consideration  besides  Duty. 
Dear  friends,  you  who  listen  so  kindly  to  the  man  who 
comes  to  you  from  across  the  sea,  I  ask  you  to  look 
about  you  in  the  streets  and  among  the  people  you 
know,  and  to  tell  me  if  the  majority  are  really  happy. 
In  this  connection  I  dare  not  speak  of  the  land  of  my 
birth,  because,  though  it  is  yours  as  truly  as  it  is 
mine,  and  we  are  all  blood-brothers,  yet  I  might  be 
thought  guilty  of  a  vain  partiality.  But  I  do  say 
that  I  cannot  think  the  majority  of  the  people  of 

294 


THE    PREACHERS 

England  are  really  happy.  I  do  not  believe  the 
majority  of  Londoners  are  happy.  I  am  sure  that 
the  majority  of  those  who  spend  an  immense  amount 
of  money  here  in  the  West  End  of  London,  are  not 
one  whit  happier  than  the  average  man  who  works 
hard  for  a  few  pounds  a  week. 

"  If  I  am  certain  of  anything  in  this  world,  I  am 
certain  that  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  never  yet  brought 
real  happiness  to  any  intelligent  human  being,  and 
never  will.  True,  I  have  met  some  happy  people  in 
London,  even  now,  when  England  lies  wounded  from 
a  cruel  blow  —  a  blow  which  I  believe  may  prove  the 
greatest  blessing  England  ever  knew.  But  those 
happy  people  are  not  running  after  pleasure  or  con- 
centrating their  intelligence  upon  their  own  gratifi- 
cation. No,  no;  those  happy  people  are  strenuously, 
soberly  striving  to  do  the  whole  of  their  duty  as 
Christians  and  British  citizens.  They  are  happy 
because  of  that. 

"  Oh,  my  dear  friends,  do  please  believe  me,  that, 
even  apart  from  God's  will  and  the  all-sacrificing  love 
of  His  Son,  there  is  absolutely  no  real  happiness  in 
this  world  outside  the  clean,  sweet  way  of  Duty.  If 
you  profess  you  love  a  woman,  but  shirk  your  duty  by 
her,  of  what  worth  is  such  love?  Is  God  of  less  im- 
portance to  you?  Is  Eternity  of  less  importance? 
Are  King  and  Country,  and  the  future  of  our  race 
and  the  millions  who  depend  on  us  for  light  and  guid- 
ance and  protection,  of  less  importance?  As  God 
hears  me,  nothing  is  of  any  importance,  beside  the  one 
thing  vital  to  salvation,  to  happiness,  to  honour,  to 
life,  here  and  hereafter.  That  one  thing  is  Duty." 

295 


THE    MESSAGE 

The  evening  congregation  was  more  demonstrative 
than  that  of  the  afternoon,  and  though  I  do  not 
think  the  impression  produced  by  Reynolds's  address 
was  deeper  or  stronger  than  that  made  by  Stairs  — 
it  could  hardly  have  been  that  —  its  effects  were  more 
noticeable.  The  great  crowd  that  streamed  out  of  the 
hall  after  the  Benediction  had  been  pronounced,  testi- 
fied in  a  hundred  ways  to  the  truth  of  John  Crondall's 
assertion  that  the  Canadian  preachers  had  stirred  the 
very  depths  of  London's  heart  as  no  other  missioners 
had  ever  stirred  them. 

By  George  Stairs's  invitation,  Mrs.  Van  Homrey, 
Constance,  Crondall,  myself,  Sir  Herbert  Tate,  and 
Forbes  Thompson,  joined  the  preachers  that  evening, 
quite  informally,  at  their  very  modest  supper  board. 
It  must  have  been  a  little  startling  to  a  bon  vivant 
like  Sir  Herbert  to  find  that  the  men  who  had  stormed 
London,  supped  upon  bread  and  cheese  and  celery 
and  cold  rice  pudding,  and,  without  a  hint  of  apology, 
offered  their  guests  the  same  Spartan  entertainment. 
But  it  was  quite  a  brilliant  function  so  far  as  mental 
activity  and  high  spirits  were  concerned.  We  were 
discussing  the  possibilities  of  the  Canadian  preachers' 
pilgrimage,  and  Crondall  said : 

"  I  know  that  some  of  you  think  I  take  too  sanguine 
a  view,  but,  mark  my  words,  these  meetings  to-day 
are  the  beginning  of  the  greatest  religious,  moral, 
and  national  revival  that  the  British  people  have  ever 
seen.  I  am  certain  of  it.  Your  blushes  are  quite 
beside  the  point,  Stairs ;  they  are  wholly  irrelevant ; 
so  is  your  modesty.  Why,  my  dear  fellow,  you 
couldn't  help  it  if  you  tried.  You  two  men  are  the 

296 


THE    PREACHERS 

mouthpiece  of  the  hour.  The  hour  having  come,  you 
could  not  stay  its  Message  if  you  tried,  nor  check  the 
tide  of  its  effect.  I  know  my  London.  In  a  matter 
of  this  kind  —  a  moral  movement  —  London  is  the 
hardest  place  in  the  kingdom  to  move,  because  its 
bigness  and  variety  make  it  so  many-sided.  Having 
achieved  what  you  have  achieved  to-day  in  London, 
I  say  nothing  can  check  your  progress.  My  counsel 
is  for  no  more  than  a  week  in  London ;  two  days  more 
in  the  west,  three  in  the  east,  and  one  in  the  south; 
and  then  a  bee-line  due  north  through  England,  with 
a  few  days  in  all  big  centres." 

"  Well,"  said  Reynolds,  "  whatever  happens  after 
to-night,  I  just  want  to  say  what  George  Stairs  has 
more  than  once  said  to  me,  and  that  is,  that  to-day's 
success  is  three  parts  due  to  Mr.  Crondall  for  every 
one  part  due  to  us." 

"  And  to  his  secretary,"  said  Stairs.  "  It  really  is 
no  more  than  bare  truth.  Without  you,  Crondall, 
there  would  have  been  no  Albert  Hall  for  us." 

"  And  no  Bishop,"  added  Reynolds. 

"  And  no  great  personages." 

"  And  no  columns  and  columns  of  newspaper  an- 
nouncements." 

"  In  point  of  fact,  there  would  have  been  none  of 
the  splendid  organization  which  made  to-day  possible. 
I  recognize  it  very  clearly.  If  this  is  to  prove  the 
beginning  of  a  really  big  movement,  then  it  is  a 
beginning  in  which  The  Citizens  and  their  founder 
have  played  a  very  big  part.  You  won't  find  that  we 
shall  forget  that;  and  I  know  Reynolds  is  with  me 
when  I  say  that  we  shall  leave  no  word  unsaid,  or  act 

297 


THE    MESSAGE 

undone,  which  could  make  our  pilgrimage  helpful  to 
The  Citizens'  campaign.  I  tell  you,  standing  before 
that  vast  assembly  to-day,  it  was  borne  in  upon  me  as 
I  had  not  felt  it  before,  that  your  aims  and  ours  are 
inseparable.  We  cannot  succeed  without  your  suc- 
ceeding, nor  you  without  our  succeeding.  Our  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity,  our  Message,  is  Duty  and 
simple  living,  and  unless  the  people  will  accept  that 
Message  they  will  never  achieve  what  you  seek  of 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  if  they  will  answer  your 
call  they  will  be  going  a  long  way  toward  accepting 
and  acting  upon  our  Message." 

"  I  am  mighty  thankful  that  has  come  home  to  you, 
Stairs,"  said  Crondall.  "  I  felt  it  very  strongly  when 
I  first  asked  you  to  come  and  talk  things  over.  Your 
pilgrimage  is  going  to  wake  up  England,  morally. 
It  will  be  our  business  to  see  that  newly  waked  Eng- 
land choose  the  right  direction  for  the  first  outlay  of 
its  energy.  The  thing  will  go  far  —  much  farther 
than  I  have  said,  and  far  beyond  England's  immedi- 
ate need.  But,  of  course,  we  mustn't  lose  sight  of 
that  immediate  need.  If  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken, 
one  of  the  first  achievements  of  this  movement  will 
be  the  safe  steering  of  the  British  public  through  the 
General  Election.  With  the  New  Year  I  hope  to  see 
a  real  Imperial  Parliament  sitting.  By  that  I  mean 
a  strong  Government  administering  England  from  the 
House  of  Commons,  while  some  of  its  members  sit  in 
an  Imperial  Chamber  —  Westminster  Hall  —  and 
help  elected  representatives  of  every  one  of  the  Colo- 
nies to  govern  the  Empire.  My  belief  is  there  will 
be  no  such  thing  as  an  Opposition  in  the  House. 

298 


THE    PREACHERS 

Why  should  England  continue  to  waste  its  time  and 
energy  over  pulling  both  ways  in  every  little  job  its 
legislators  have  to  tackle.  It  sterilizes  the  efforts  of 
the  good  men,  and  gives  innumerable  openings  to  the 
fools  and  cranks  and  obstructionists.  You  will  find 
the  very  names  of  the  old  futile  cross-purposes  of 
party  warfare  will  fall  into  the  limbo  which  has  swal- 
lowed up  the  pillory,  the  stocks,  and  Little  England- 
ism.  With  deference  to  the  cloth  present  in  the  per- 
son of  our  reverend  friends  here,  let  me  quote  you 
what  to  me  is  one  of  the  most  strikingly  interesting 
passages  in  the  Bible :  '  The  vile  person  shall  be  no 
more  called  liberal.'  It  will  become  clear  to  all  men 
that  the  only  possible  party,  the  only  people  who  can 
possibly  stand  for  progress,  movement,  advance,  are 
those  who  stand  firm  for  Imperial  Federation." 

"  And  then  ?  "  said  Constance,  leaning  forward, 
her  face  illumined  by  her  shining  eyes.  Crondall 
drew  a  long  breath. 

"  And  then  —  then  Britain  will  have  something  to 
say  to  the  Kaiser." 

As  we  rose  from  the  table,  George  Stairs  laid  his 
hand  on  Reynolds's  shoulder. 

"  Deep  waters  these,  my  friend,"  said  he,  "  for 
simple  parsons  from  the  backwoods.  But  our  part 
is  plain,  and  close  at  hand.  Our  work  is  to  make  the 
writing  on  the  wall  flame  till  all  can  read  and  feel: 
Duty  first,  last,  and  all  the  time.  '  The  conclusion  of 
the  whole  matter.'  " 

"  Yes,  yes ;  that's  so,"  said  Reynolds,  thoughtfully. 
And  then  he  added,  as  it  were  an  afterthought: 
"  But  was  that  remark  about  vile  people  no  more 

299 


being  called  liberal  really  scriptural,  I  wonder  —  I 
wonder ! " 

"  Without  a  doubt,"  said  Crondall,  with  a  broad 
grin.  "  You  look  up  Isaiah  xxxn.  5.  You  will  find 
it  there,  written  maybe  three  thousand  years  ago, 
fitting  to-day's  situation  like  a  glove." 

On  the  way  out  to  South  Kensington,  where  I  ac- 
companied the  ladies,  I  asked  Constance  what  she 
thought  of  my  old  chum,  George  Stairs. 

"  Why,  Dick,"  she  said,  "  he  makes  me  feel  that  an 
English  village  can  still  produce  the  finest  type  of 
man  that  walks  the  earth.  But,  as  things  have  been, 
in  our  time,  I'm  glad  this  particular  man  didn't  re- 
main in  his  native  village  —  aren't  you  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  I  agreed,  with  a  half -sad  note  I  could  not 
keep  out  of  my  voice.  "  I  suppose  Colonial  life  has 
taught  him  a  lot." 

"  Oh,  he  is  magnificent !  " 

"And  look  at  John  Crondall!" 

"  Ah,  John  is  a  wonderful  man ;  Empire-taught,  is 
John." 

"  And  I  suppose  the  man  who  has  never  lived  the 
outside  life  in  the  big,  open  places  can  never " 

And  then  I  think  she  saw  what  had  brought  the 
twinge  of  sadness  to  me;  for  she  touched  my  arm, 
her  bright  eyes  gleamed  upon  me,  and  — 

"  You're  a  terribly  impatient  man,  Dick."  she  said, 
with  a  smile.  "  It  seems  to  me  you've  trekked  a 
mighty  long  way  from  The  Mass  office  in  —  how 
many  weeks  is  it?  " 


300 


IX 


THE    CITIZENS 

Serene  will  be  our  days,  and  bright 
And  happy  will  our  nature  be 
When  love  is  an  unerring  light, 
And  joy  its  own  security. 
And  they  a  blissful  course  may  hold 
Ev'n  now,  who,  not  unwisely  bold, 
Live  in  the  spirit  of  this  creed, 
Yet  find  that  other  strength  according  to  their  need. 

Ode  to  Duty. 

CHARLES  CORBETT'S  History  of  the  Re- 
vival is  to  my  mind  the  most  interesting  book 
of  this  century.  There  are  passages  in  it  which  leave 
me  marvelling  afresh  each  time  I  read  them,  that  any 
writer,  however  gifted,  could  make  quite  so  intimate 
a  revelation,  without  personal  knowledge  of  the  inside 
workings  of  the  movement  he  describes  so  perfectly. 
But  it  is  a  fact  that  Corbett  never  spoke  with  Stairs 
or  Reynolds,  or  Crondall;  neither,  I  think,  was  he 
personally  known  to  any  member  of  the  executive  of 
The  Citizens.  Yet  I  know  from  my  own  working 
experience  of  the  Revival,  both  in  connection  with  the 
pilgrimage  of  the  Canadian  preachers  and  the  cam- 
paign of  The  Citizens,  that  Corbett's  descriptions  are 
marvellously  accurate  and  lifelike,  and  that  the  con- 
clusions he  draws  could  not  have  been  made  more  cor- 

301 


THE   MESSAGE 

rect  and  luminous  if  they  had  been  written  by  the 
leaders  of  the  great  joint  movement  themselves. 

The  educational  authorities  were  certainly  well  ad- 
vised in  making  Corbett's  great  work  the  base  from 
which  the  contemporary  history  text-books  for  use  in 
the  national  schools  were  drawn.  Your  modern  stu- 
dents, by  the  way,  would  find  it  hard  to  realize  that, 
even  at  the  time  of  the  Revival,  our  school-children 
were  obliged  to  waste  most  of  the  few  hours  a  week 
which  were  devoted  to  historical  studies,  to  the  weari- 
some memorizing  of  dates  and  genealogies  connected 
with  the  Saxon  Heptarchy.  As  a  rule  they  had  no 
time  left  in  which  to  learn  anything  whatever  of  the 
progress  of  their  own  age,  or  the  nineteenth-century 
development  of  the  Empire.  At  that  time  a  national 
schoolboy  destined  to  earn  his  living  as  a  soldier  or 
a  sailor,  or  a  tinker  or  a  tailor,  sometimes  knew  a 
little  of  the  Saxon  kings  of  England,  or  even  a  few 
dates  connected  with  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  the 
fact  that  Henry  VIII.  had  six  wives.  But  he  had 
never  heard  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and  knew  nothing 
whatever  of  the  incorporation  of  India,  Australia, 
South  Africa,  or  Canada. 

I  suppose  the  most  notable  and  impressive  intima- 
tion received  by  the  British  public  of  the  fact  that  a 
great  religious,  moral,  and  social  revival  had  begun 
among  them,  was  contained  in  Monday  morning's 
newspapers,  after  the  first  great  Albert  Hall  services. 
The  recognized  chief  among  imperialistic  journals 
became  from  the  beginning  the  organ  of  the  new 
movement.  Upon  that  Monday  morning  I  remember 
that  this  journal's  first  leading  article  was  devoted 

302 


THE    CITIZENS 

to  the  Message  of  the  Canadian  preachers,  its  second 
to  the  coming  of  the  various  Colonial  delegates  for  the 
Westminster  Hall  Conference.  For  the  rest,  the 
centre  of  the  paper  was  occupied  by  a  four-page 
supplement,  with  portraits,  describing  fully,  and  re- 
porting verbatim  the  Albert  Hall  services.  The  open- 
ing sentences  of  the  leading  article  gave  the  public 
its  cue: 

"  There  can  be  little  doubt,  we  think,  that  yester- 
day's services  at  the  Albert  Hall  mark  the  inaugura- 
tion of  a  national  movement  in  morals,  which,  before 
it  has  gone  far,  is  as  likely  to  earn  the  name  of  the 
Revolution  as  that  of  Revival.  A  religious,  moral, 
and  social  revolution  is  what  we  anticipate  as  the 
result  of  the  mission  of  the  Canadian  preachers. 
Never  before  has  London  been  so  stirred  to  its  moral 
and  emotional  depths.  In  such  a  movement  the  pro- 
vincial centres  are  not  likely  to  prove  less  susceptible 
than  the  metropolis." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  had  occasion  to  know  that 
Mr.  James  Bryanstone,  the  preachers'  secretary  (in 
whose  name  John  Crondall  had  carried  out  the  whole 
work  of  organization,  while  I  served  him  as  secretary 
and  assistant)  received  during  that  Monday  no  fewer 
than  thirty-four  separate  telegraphic  invitations  from 
provincial  centres  subsequently  visited  by  Stairs  and 
Reynolds.  It  was,  as  Crondall  had  said:  The  time 
was  ripe,  and  the  Canadian  preachers  were  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  hour.  Their  Message  filled  them,  and 
England  was  conscious  of  its  need  of  that  Message. 

On  Monday  and  Tuesday  the  afternoon  and  eve- 
ning services  at  the  Albert  Hall  were  repeated. 

303 


THE    MESSAGE 

Thousands  of  people  were  unable  to  obtain  admission 
upon  each  occasion.  Some  of  these  people  were  ad- 
dressed by  friends  of  John  Crondall's  and  The  Citi- 
zens, within  the  precincts  of  the  hall.  On  Tuesday 
morning,  sunrise  found  a  great  throng  of  people 
waiting  to  secure  places  when  the  hall  should  open. 
On  both  days  members  of  the  Royal  Family  were 
present,  and  on  Tuesday  the  Primate  of  England 
presided  over  the  service  addressed  by  Stairs. 

During  all  this  time,  John  Crondall  was  working 
night  and  day,  and  I  was  busy  with  him  in  organiz- 
ing the  recruiting  campaign  of  The  Citizens.  The 
Legion  of  Frontiersmen,  and  the  members  of  some 
scores  of  rifle  clubs,  had  been  enrolled  en  bloc  as 
members,  and  applications  were  pouring  in  upon  us 
by  every  post  from  men  who  had  seen  service  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  world,  and  from  men  able  to  equip 
themselves  either  as  mounted  or  foot  riflemen.  On 
Tuesday  evening  the  Canadian  preachers  announced 
that  their  next  day  services  would  be  held  at  the 
People's  Palace,  in  the  East  End.  But  I  fancy  that, 
among  the  packed  thousands  who  attended  The  Citi- 
zens' first  public  meeting  at  the  Albert  Hall  on 
Wednesday  afternoon,  many  came  under  the  impres- 
sion that  they  were  to  hear  the  Canadian  preachers. 

The  man  of  all  others  in  England  most  fitted  for 
the  office,  presided  over  that  first  meeting,  in  full 
review  uniform,  and  wearing  the  sword  which  had 
been  returned  to  him  by  General  Baron  von  Fiichter, 
after  the  historic  surrender  at  the  Mansion  House  on 
Black  Saturday.  The  great  little  Field  Marshal  rose 
at  three  o'clock  and  stood  for  full  five  minutes,  wait- 

304 


THE    CITIZENS 

ing  for  the  tempest  of  cheering  which  greeted  him  to 
subside,  before  he  could  introduce  John  Crondall  to 
that  huge  audience.  Even  when  the  Field  Marshal 
began  to  speak  he  could  not  obtain  complete  silence. 
As  one  burst  of  cheering  rumbled  to  its  close,  another 
would  rise  from  the  hall's  far  side  like  approaching 
thunder,  swelling  as  it  came. 

It  seemed  the  London  public  was  trying  to  make  up 
to  its  erstwhile  hero  for  its  long  neglect  of  his  brave 
endeavours  to  warn  them  against  the  evils  which  had 
actually  befallen.  At  last,  not  to  waste  more  time, 
the  little  Field  Marshal  drew  his  sword,  and  waved  it 
above  his  head  till  a  penetrant  ray  of  afternoon  sun- 
light caught  and  transformed  the  blade  into  a  streak 
of  living  flame. 

"  There  is  a  stain  on  it !  "  he  shouted,  shaking  the 
blade.  "  It  belongs  to  you  —  to  England  —  and 
there's  a  stain  on  it;  got  on  Black  Saturday.  Now 
silence,  for  the  man  who's  for  wiping  out  all  stains. 
Silence!" 

It  was  long  since  the  little  man  had  delivered  him- 
self of  such  a  roar,  as  that  last  "  Silence ! "  There 
were  one  or  two  Indian  veterans  in  the  hall  who  remem- 
bered the  note.  It  had  its  effect,  and  John  Crondall 
stood,  presently,  before  an  entirely  silent  and  eagerly 
expectant  multitude,  when  he  began  his  explanation 
of  the  ends  and  aims  of  The  Citizens.  I  remember 
he  began  by  saying : 

"  I  cannot  pretend  to  be  a  Canadian  preacher  —  I 
wish  I  could."  And  here  there  was  another  demon- 
stration of  cheering.  One  realized  that  afternoon 
that  the  Canadians  had  lighted  a  fire  in  London  that 
305 


THE    MESSAGE 

would  not  easily  be  put  out.  "  No,  I  am  a  native  of 
your  own  London,"  said  Crondall ;  "  but  I  admit  to 
having  learned  most  of  the  little  I  know  in  Canada, 
South  Africa,  India,  and  Australia.  And  if  there  is 
one  thing  I  have  learned  very  thoroughly  in  those 
countries,  it  is  to  love  England.  She  has  no  braver 
or  more  devoted  sons  and  lovers  within  her  own 
shores  than  our  kinsmen  oversea.  You  will  find  we 
shall  have  fresh  proofs  of  that  very  soon.  Mean- 
time, just  in  passing,  I  want  to  tell  you  this:  You 
have  read  something  in  the  papers  of  The  Citizens, 
the  organization  of  Britishers  who  are  sworn  to  the 
defence  of  Britain.  I  am  here  to  tell  you  about  them. 
Well,  in  the  past  fortnight,  I  have  received  two  hun- 
dred and  forty  cable  messages  from  representative 
citizens  in  Canada,  South  Africa,  Australia,  India, 
and  other  parts  of  the  Empire,  claiming  membership, 
and  promising  support  through  thick  and  thin,  from 
thousands  of  our  kinsfolk  oversea.  So,  before  I 
begin,  I  give  you  the  greeting  of  men  of  our  blood 
from  all  the  ends  of  the  earth.  They  are  with  us 
heart  and  hand,  my  friends,  and  eager  to  prove  it. 
And  now  I  am  going  to  tell  you  something  about 
The  Citizens" 

But  before  that  last  sentence  had  left  Crondall's 
lips,  we  were  in  the  thick  of  another  storm  of  cheer- 
ing. The  religious  character  of  the  Canadian 
preachers'  meetings  had  been  sufficient  to  prevent 
these  outbursts  of  popular  feeling ;  but  now  the  pub- 
lic seemed  to  welcome  the  secular  freedom  of  The 
Citizens'  gathering,  as  an  opportunity  for  giving 
their  feelings  vent.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was  John 

306 


THE    CITIZENS 

Crondall's  message  from  the  Colonies  that  they 
cheered.  They  were  moved,  I  am  sure,  by  a  vague 
general  approval  of  the  idea  of  a  combination  of 
citizens  for  British  defence.  But  their  cheering  I 
take  to  have  been  produced  by  feelings  they  would 
have  been  hard  put  to  it  to  define  in  any  way.  They 
had  been  deeply  stirred  by  the  teaching  of  the  Cana- 
dian preachers.  In  short,  they  had  been  seized  by 
the  fundamental  tenets  of  the  simple  faith  which  has 
since  come  to  be  known  to  the  world  as  "  British 
Christianity " ;  and  they  were  eager  to  find  some 
way  in  which  they  could  give  tangible  expression  to 
the  faith  that  was  burgeoning  within  them ;  stirring 
them  as  young  mothers  are  stirred,  filling  them  with 
resolves  and  aspirations,  none  the  less  real  and  deep- 
seated  because  they  were  as  yet  incoherent  and  shape- 
less. 

I  am  only  quoting  the  best  observers  of  the  time 
,in  this  description  of  public  feeling  when  John  Cron- 
dall  made  his  great  recruiting  speech  for  The  Citi- 
zens. The  event  proved  my  chief  to  have  been  abso- 
lutely right  in  his  reckoning,  absolutely  sound  in  his 
judgment.  He  had  urged  from  the  beginning  that 
The  Citizens  and  the  Canadian  preachers  had  a  com- 
mon aim.  "  But  you  teach  a  general  principle,"  he 
had  said  to  George  Stairs,  "  while  we  supply  the  par- 
ticular instance.  We  must  reap  where  you  sow;  we 
must  glean  after  you ;  we  must  follow  you,  as  night 
follows  day,  as  accomplishment  follows  preparation 
—  because  you  arouse  the  sense  of  duty,  you  teach 
the  sacredness  of  duty,  while  we  give  it  particular 
direction.  It's  you  who  will  make  them  Citizens,  my 

307 


THE    MESSAGE 

dear  fellow  —  for  what  you  mean  by  a  true  Chris- 
tian is  what  I  mean  by  a  true  citizen  —  our  part 
is  to  swear  them  in.  Or,  as  you  might  say,  you  pre- 
pare, and  we  confirm.  Those  that  won't  come  up  to 
your  standard  as  Christians,  won't  be  any  use  to  us 
as  Citizens." 

Just  how  shrewdly  John  Crondall  had  gauged  the 
matter  perhaps  no  one  else  can  realize,  even  now,  so 
clearly  as  those  who  played  a  recorder's  part  in  the 
recruiting  campaign,  as  I  did  from  that  first  day  in 
the  Albert  Hall,  with  Constance  Grey's  assistance, 
and,  later  on,  with  the  assistance  of  many  other  peo- 
ple. At  a  further  stage,  and  in  other  places,  we  made 
arrangements  for  enrolling  members  after  every 
meeting.  Upon  this  occasion  we  were  unable  to  face 
the  task,  and,  instead,  a  card  was  given  to  every  ap- 
plicant, for  subsequent  presentation  at  The  Citizens' 
headquarters  in  Victoria  Street,  where  I  spent  many 
busy  hours,  with  a  rapidly  growing  clerical  staff, 
swearing  in  new  members,  and  booking  the  full  de- 
tails of  each  man's  position  and  capabilities,  for  reg- 
istration on  the  roster. 

We  had  no  fees  of  any  kind,  but  every  new  member 
was  invited  to  contribute  according  to  his  means  to 
The  Citizens'  equipment  fund.  During  the  twenty- 
four  hours  following  that  first  meeting  at  the  Albert 
Hall,  over  twenty-seven  thousand  pounds  was  re- 
ceived in  this  way  from  new  members.  But  we  en- 
rolled many  who  contributed  nothing;  and  we  en- 
rolled a  few  men  to  whom  we  actually  made  small 
payments  from  a  special  fund  raised  privately  for 
that  purpose.  All  this  last-named  minority,  and  a 

308 


THE    CITIZENS 

certain  proportion  of  other  members,  went  directly 
into  camp  training  on  the  estates  of  various  wealthy 
members,  who  themselves  were  providing  camp  equip- 
ment and  instructors,  while,  in  many  cases,  arranging 
also  for  employment  which  should  make  these  camps 
as  nearly  as  might  be  self-supporting. 

Among  the  list  of  people  who  agreed  to  deliver 
addresses  at  our  meetings  we  now  included  many  of 
the  most  eloquent  speakers,  and  some  of  the  most 
famous  names  in  England.  But  I  am  not  sure  that 
any  of  them  ever  evoked  the  same  storms  of  enthu- 
siasm, the  same  instant  and  direct  response  that  John 
Crondall  earned  by  his  simple  speeches.  Heart  and 
soul,  John  Crondall  was  absorbed  in  the  perfection 
and  furtherance  of  the  organization  he  had  founded, 
and  when  he  sought  public  support  he  was  irresistible. 

In  those  first  days  of  the  campaign  there  were 
times  when  John  Crondall  was  so  furiously  occupied, 
that  his  bed  hardly  knew  the  touch  of  him,  and  I 
could  not  exchange  a  word  with  him  outside  the  im- 
mediate work  of  our  hands.  This  was  doubtless  one 
reason  why  I  took  a  certain  idea  of  mine  to  Constance 
Grey,  instead  of  to  my  chief.  Together,  she  and  I 
interviewed  Brigadier-General  Hapgood,  of  the  Sal- 
vation Army,  and,  on  the  next  day,  the  venerable 
chief  of  that  remarkable  organization,  General  Booth. 
The  proposition  we  put  before  General  Booth  was 
that  he  should  join  hands  with  us  in  dealing  with 
that  section  of  our  would-be  members  who  described 
themselves  as  unemployed  and  without  resources. 

For  five  minutes  the  old  General  stroked  his  beard, 
and  offered  occasional  ejaculatory  interrogations.  I 

309 


THE    MESSAGE 

pointed  out  that  the  converts  of  the  Canadian  preach- 
ers (for  whom  the  General  expressed  unbounded  ad- 
miration and  respect)  flocked  to  our  standard,  full 
of  genuine  eagerness  to  carry  out  the  gospel  of  duty 
and  simple  living.  Suddenly,  in  the  middle  of  one 
of  my  sentences,  this  commander-in-chief  of  an  army 
larger  than  that  of  any  monarch  in  Christendom 
made  up  his  mind,  and  stopped  me  with  a  gesture. 

"  We  will  do  it,"  he  said.  "  Yes,  yes,  I  see  what 
you  would  say.  Yes,  yes,  to  be  sure,  to  be  sure ;  that 
is  quite  so.  We  will  do  it.  Come  and  see  me  again, 
and  I  will  put  a  working  plan  before  you.  Good  day 
—  God  bless  you !  " 

And  we  were  being  shown  out.  It  was  all  over  in 
a  few  minutes;  but  that  was  the  beginning  of  the 
connection  between  the  Salvation  Army  and  that  sec- 
tion of  The  Citizens  whose  members  lacked  both 
means  and  employment.  According  to  a  safe  and 
conservative  estimate,  we  are  told  that  the  total  num- 
ber of  sworn  Citizens  subsequently  handled  by  the 
Salvation  Army  was  six  hundred  and  seventy-five 
thousand.  We  supplied  the  instructors,  officers,  and 
all  equipment ;  the  Salvation  Army  carried  out  all  the 
other  work  of  control,  organization,  and  maintenance, 
and  made  their  great  farm  camps  so  nearly  self-sup- 
porting as  to  be  practically  no  burden  upon  The 
Citizens'  funds.  The  effect  upon  the  men  themselves 
was  wholly  admirable.  Every  one  of  them  was  a 
genuinely  unemployed  worker,  and  the  way  they  all 
took  their  training  was  marvellous. 

I  think  Constance  Grey  was  as  pleased  as  I  was 
with  the  praise  we  won  from  John  Crondall  over  this. 

310 


THE    CITIZENS 

A  little  while  before  this  time  I  should  have  felt  jeal- 
ous pangs  when  I  saw  her  sweet  face  lighten  and  glow 
at  a  word  of  commendation  from  John  Crondall.  But 
my  secretaryship  was  teaching  me  many  things.  No 
other  woman  could  ever  mean  to  me  one  tithe  of  all 
that  Constance  Grey  meant.  Of  that  I  was  very 
sure.  To  think  of  such  women  as  handsome  Beatrice 
Blaine  or  Sylvia  Wheeler,  in  a  vein  of  comparison, 
was  for  me  like  comparing  the  light  of  a  candle  in 
a  distant  window  with  the  moon  herself.  The  mere 
sound  of  Constance's  voice  thrilled  me  as  nothing 
else  could.  But  I  am  glad  to  remember  now  that  I 
no  longer  knew  so  small  an  emotion  as  jealousy  where 
she  was  concerned. 

John  Crondall  was  the  strongest  man  of  all  the  men 
I  knew;  Constance  was  the  sweetest  woman.  Here 
was  a  natural  and  fitting  comradeship.  I  thought  of 
my  chief  as  the  mate  of  the  woman  I  loved.  My 
heart  ached  at  times.  But  I  am  glad  and  proud  that 
I  had  no  jealousy. 


311 


SMALL    FIGURES    ON    A    GREAT    STAGE 

I,  loving  freedom  and  untried, 
No  sport  of  every  random  gust, 
Yet  being  to  myself  a  guide, 
Too  blindly  have  reposed  my  trust ; 
And  oft,  when  in  my  heart  was  heard 
Thy  timely  mandate,  I  deferred 
The  task,  in  smoother  walks  to  stray, 
But  thee  I  now  would  serve  more  strictly,  if  I  may. 

Ode  to  Duty. 

IT  has  often  been  said  of  the  Canadian  preachers 
that  they  conferred  the  gift  of  eloquence  upon  all 
their  converts.  It  is  certainly  a  fact  that  long  before 
Stairs  and  Reynolds  had  traversed  half  the  length  of 
England,  disciples  of  theirs  were  winning  converts  to 
"  British  Christianity "  —  as  the  religion  of  Duty 
and  simple  living  came  to  be  called  —  in  every  county 
in  the  kingdom. 

In  the  same  way,  the  progress  of  The  Citizens' 
recruiting  campaign  was  made  marvellously  rapid 
and  triumphant  in  character  by  reason  of  the  enthu- 
siastic activity  of  all  new  adherents.  During  the 
second  of  John  Crondall's  great  meetings  in  Birming- 
ham, for  example,  we  received  telegraphic  greeting 
from  the  chairmen  presiding  over  one  hundred  and 
ninety-eight  other  meetings  then  being  held  for  the 
furtherance  of  our  cause  in  different  parts  of  the 


SMALL  FIGURES  ON  A  GREAT  STAGE 

country.  And,  in  many  cases,  those  who  addressed 
these  meetings  were  among  the  most  famous  public 
speakers  in  England. 

In  most  towns  we  spent  no  more  than  twenty-four 
hours,  in  others  no  more  than  twelve  hours,  and  in 
some  we  stayed  only  a  third  of  that  time.  In  one 
memorable  day  we  addressed  immense  gatherings  in 
four  different  towns,  and  travelled  one  hundred  and 
thirty  miles  to  boot.  But  in  each  one  of  those  towns, 
as  in  every  centre  visited,  we  left  a  properly  organ- 
ized committee  at  work,  with  arrangements  for  fre- 
quent meetings,  and  the  swearing  in  of  new  members. 

The  Canadian  preachers  spent  only  one  day  in 
many  of  the  places  they  visited.  But  in  large  centres 
they  stayed  longer,  because,  after  the  first  week  of 
the  pilgrimage,  the  attendances  at  their  meetings 
became  unmanageably  large,  owing  to  the  arrange- 
ments made  by  railway  companies,  who  ran  special 
trains  to  tap  the  outlying  parts  of  every  district 
visited.  Advance  agents  —  a  hard-working  band, 
many  of  whom  were  well-to-do  volunteers  —  prepared 
the  way  in  every  detail  for  the  progress  of  both  the 
Canadians  and  ourselves,  and  local  residents  placed 
every  possible  facility  at  our  disposal. 

Never  in  the  history  of  religious  revivals  in  Eng- 
land has  anything  been  known  to  equal  the  whole- 
souled  enthusiasm  with  which  the  new  evangel  of 
Duty  was  welcomed  as  the  basis  of  our  twentieth-cen- 
tury national  life.  The  facts  that  the  Canadian 
preachers  were  rarely  seen  apart,  and  that  the  teach- 
ing of  each  was  identical  with  that  of  the  other,  com- 
bined with  the  general  knowledge  that  one  repre- 

313 


THE    MESSAGE 

sented  the  Church  of  England  and  the  other  a  great 
Nonconformist  body ;  these  things  divested  the  pil- 
grimage of  any  suggestion  of  denominationalism,  and 
lent  it  the  same  urgent  strength  of  appeal  for  mem- 
bers of  all  sects,  and  members  of  none.  This  seems 
natural  enough  to  us  now,  ours  being  a  Christian 
country.  But  it  was  regarded  then  as  a  wonderful 
testimony  to  the  virtue  of  the  new  teaching,  because 
at  that  time  sectarian  differences,  animosities  even, 
were  very  clearly  marked,  and  led  far  more  naturally 
to  opposition  and  hostility  between  the  representatives 
of  different  denominations  than  to  anything  ap- 
proaching united  effort  in  a  common  cause. 

It  was  during  the  day  we  spent  in  York  that 
chance  led  to  my  witnessing  an  incident  which  greatly 
affected  me.  My  relations  with  my  chief,  John  Cron- 
dall,  were  not  such  as  to  call  for  the  observance  of 
much  ceremony  between  us.  Accordingly,  it  was 
with  no  thought  of  interference  with  his  privacy  that 
I  blundered  into  my  chief's  sitting-room  to  announce 
the  number  of  new  members  we  had  enrolled  after 
the  meeting.  John  Crondall  was  standing  on  the 
hearth-rug,  his  right  hand  was  resting  on  Constance 
Grey's  shoulder,  his  lips  were  touching  her  forehead. 

For  an  instant  I  thought  of  retreat.  But  the  thing 
seemed  too  clumsy.  Accordingly,  having  turned  to 
close  the  door,  with  deliberation,  I  advanced  into  the 
room  with  some  awkward  remark  about  having 
thought  my  chief  was  alone,  and  produced  my  figures 
of  the  enrolment  of  new  members.  After  a  few 
moments  Constance  left  us,  referring  to  some  errand 
she  had  in  view.  I  did  not  look  at  her,  and  John 

314 


SMALL  FIGURES  ON  A  GREAT  STAGE 

Crondall  plunged  at  once  into  working  talk.  As  for 
me,  I  was  acutely  conscious  that  I  had  seen  Crondall 
kiss  Constance;  but  my  chief  made  no  sign  to  show 
me  whether  or  not  he  was  aware  that  I  had  seen  this. 

Although  I  thought  I  had  accustomed  myself  to 
the  idea  of  these  two  being  predestined  mates,  I  real- 
ized now  that  no  amount  of  reasoning  would  ever 
really  reconcile  me  to  the  practical  outworking  of  the 
idea.  Of  course,  my  feeling  about  it  would  be  de- 
scribed as  jealousy  pure  and  simple.  Perhaps  it  was; 
but  I  cherish  the  idea  that  it  was  some  more  kindly 
shade  of  feeling.  I  know  it  brought  no  hint  of  re- 
sentment or  weakening  in  my  affection  for  John 
Crondall ;  and  most  assuredly  I  harboured  no  unkind 
thought  of  Constance.  But  I  loved  her ;  every  pulse 
in  me  throbbed  love  and  longing  at  her  approach. 
Again  and  again  I  had  demonstrated  to  myself  my 
own  unworthiness  of  such  a  woman ;  the  natural 
affinity  between  Constance  and  Crondall.  Yet  now, 
the  sight  of  that  kiss  was  as  the  sound  of  a  knell  in 
my  heart ;  it  filled  me  with  an  aching  lament  for  the 

death  of  of  something  which  had  still  lived  in 

me,  whether  admitted  or  not,  till  then. 

For  days  after  that  episode  of  the  kiss  I  lived  in 
hourly  expectation  of  a  communication  from  John 
Crondall.  Our  relations  were  so  intimate  that  I  felt 
certain  he  would  not  withhold  his  confidence  for  long. 
But  day  succeeded  day  in  our  strenuous,  hurried  life, 
and  no  word  came  to  me  from  my  chief  regarding 
any  other  thing  than  our  own  work.  Indeed,  I 
thought  I  detected  a  certain  new  sternness  in  John 
Crondall's  demeanour,  an  extra  rigid  concentration 

315 


THE    MESSAGE 

upon  work,  which  carried  with  it,  for  me,  a  sugges- 
tion of  his  being  unwilling  to  meet  one  upon  any 
other  than  the  working  footing.  I  was  surprised  and 
a  little  hurt  about  this,  because  of  late  there  had  been 
no  reservations  in  the  confidence  with  which  my  chief 
treated  me.  Also,  I  could  not  see  any  possible  reason 
for  secrecy  in  such  a  matter ;  it  might  as  well  be 
told  first  as  last,  I  thought.  And  I  watched  Con- 
stance with  a  brooding  eye  for  signs  she  never  made, 
for  a  confidence  which  did  not  come  from  either  of 
my  friends. 

The  thing  possessed  my  mind,  and  must,  I  fear, 
have  interfered  materially  with  my  work.  But  after 
a  time  the  idea  came  to  me  that  these  two  had  decided 
to  allow  our  joint  work  to  take  precedence  of  their 
private  happiness,  and  to  put  aside  their  own  affairs 
until  the  aims  of  The  Citizens  had  been  attained.  I 
recalled  certain  little  indications  I  myself  had  re- 
ceived from  Constance  before  John  Crondall's  return 
from  South  Africa,  to  the  effect  that  personal  feeling 
could  have  no  great  weight  with  her,  while  our  na- 
tional fate  hung  in  the  balance.  And,  by  dulling  the 
edge  of  my  expectancy,  this  conclusion  somehow 
eased  the  ache  which  had  possessed  me  since  the  day 
of  the  kiss  to  which  chance  had  made  me  a  witness. 
But  it  did  not  altogether  explain  to  me  the  new  re- 
serve, the  hint  of  stiffness  in  John  Crondall's  manner ; 
and,  rightly  or  wrongly,  I  knew  when  I  took  Con- 
stance's hand  in  mine,  or  met  the  gaze  of  her  shining 
eyes,  that  I  did  so  as  a  devout  lover,  and  not  merely 
as  a  friend. 


316 


XI 


Through  no  disturbance  of  my  soul 
Or  strong  compunction  in  me  wrought, 
I  supplicate  for  thy  controul ; 
But  in  the  quietness  of  thought : 
Me  this  unchartered  freedom  tires  ; 
I  feel  the  weight  of  chance  desires  : 
My  hopes  no  more  must  change  their  name; 
I  long  for  a  repose  that  ever  is  the  same. 

Ode  to  Duty. 

FROM  the  first,  the  courtesy  of  the  Press  was 
securely  enlisted  in  The  Citizens'  favour  by 
John  Crondall.  For  many  months  the  Standard, 
now  firmly  established  as  the  principal  organ  of  the 
reform  movement,  devoted  an  entire  page  each  day 
to  the  progress  of  our  campaign  and  the  pilgrimage 
of  our  forerunners  —  the  Canadian  preachers.  John 
Crondall  had  gone  thoroughly  into  the  matter  at  the 
beginning  with  the  editor  of  this  journal,  and  the 
key-note  thus  given  was  taken  by  the  Press  of  the 
whole  country. 

The  essence  of  our  treatment  by  the  newspapers 
lay  in  their  careful  avoidance  of  all  matter  which 
would  be  likely  to  earn  for  the  movement  the  hostility 
of  Germany,  or  of  the  officers  in  command  of  the 
German  forces  in  England.  Our  language  took  on 

317 


THE    MESSAGE 

a  new  and  special  meaning  in  the  columns  of  the 
newspapers,  where  reports  of  our  campaign  were  con- 
cerned. Such  adjectives  as  "  social,"  "  moral,"  and 
the  like  were  made  to  cover  quite  special  meanings, 
as  applied  to  the  organization  of  The  Citizens.  So 
ably  was  all  this  done,  that  the  German  authorities 
regarded  the  whole  movement  as  social  and  domestic, 
with  a  direct  bearing  upon  the  General  Election, 
perhaps,  but  none  whatever  upon  international  poli- 
tics or  Anglo-German  relations. 

In  Elberfeld's  ponderous  history  we  are  given  the 
text  of  a  despatch  to  the  Kaiser  in  which  General 
Baron  von  Fiichter  assured  his  Imperial  master  that 
any  interference  with  The  Citizens  and  their  meet- 
ings would  be  gratuitous  and  impolitic: 

"  Their  aims  being  purely  social  and  domestic,  and 
those  of  a  quasi-religious  Friendly  Society,  resem- 
bling something  between  their  '  Band  of  Hope '  and 
their  '  Antediluvian  Buffaloes.'  The  English  have  a 
passion  for  this  kind  of  child's  play,  and  are  absurdly 
impatient  of  official  surveillance.  Their  incorrigible 
sentimentality  is  soothed  by  such  movements  as  those 
of  the  Canadian  preachers  and  The  Citizens;  but 
even  the  rudiments  of  discipline  or  efficient  coordina- 
tion are  lacking  among  them.  Combination  against 
us  would  be  impossible  for  them,  for  this  is  a  country 
of  individualists,  among  whom  the  matter  of  obliga- 
tions to  the  State  is  absolutely  not  recognized.  There 
is  no  trace  of  military  feeling  among  the  people,  and 
in  my  opinion  the  invasion  might  safely  have  been 
attempted  five,  if  not  ten  years,  before  it  was.  The 
absence  of  any  note  of  resentment  in  their  news- 

318 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

papers  against  our  occupation  has  been  quite  marked 
since  their  preoccupation  with  the  Canadian  preach- 
ers and  The  Citizens.  The  people  accept  it  in  the 
most  matter-of-course  manner,  and  are  already  en- 
tirely absorbed  once  more  in  their  own  affairs,  and 
even  in  their  sports.  British  courage  and  independ- 
ence have  been  no  more  than  a  myth  for  many  years 
past  —  a  bubble  which  your  Majesty's  triumphantly 
successful  policy  has  burst  for  ever." 

Another  important  feature,  alike  of  our  campaign 
and  the  pilgrimage  of  the  preachers,  was  their  posi- 
tively non-party  and  non-sectarian  character.  John 
Crondall  had  been  firm  upon  this  point  from  the 
beginning.  I  remember  his  saying  at  the  first  meet- 
ing of  the  executive  of  The  Citizens: 

"  Our  party  government,  party  conflict,  here  in 
England,  have  sapped  the  vitality  of  the  British  Em- 
pire long  enough.  I  believe  the  invasion  has  scotched 
the  thing,  and  we  must  be  very  careful  to  do  nothing 
that  might  help  to  bring  it  to  life  again.  A  Radical, 
as  such,  is  neither  better  nor  worse  than  a  Conserva- 
tive. It  does  not  matter  two  pins  what  becomes  of 
the  Conservative  organization,  or  the  Liberal  party, 
as  parties.  I  should  be  delighted  never  to  hear  of 
either  again.  Our  business  is  the  Empire's  business ; 
and  we  want  the  people  of  the  Empire  with  us  —  the 
whole  lot  of  them  —  as  one  solid  party." 

Accordingly,  no  mention  of  any  political  party  was 
ever  heard  at  our  meetings.  We  made  no  appeal  to 
any  given  section  of  the  community,  but  only  to  the 
British  public  as  a  whole.  We  aimed  at  showing  that 
there  could  be  no  division  in  national  affairs,  save  the 

319 


THE    MESSAGE 

division  which  separates  citizens  and  patriots  from 
men  worthy  of  neither  name.  And  that  is  why  Mau- 
rice Hall,  in  his  famous  British  Renaissance,  was  able 
to  write  that : 

"  The  General  Elections  of  the  invasion  year  were 
practically  directed  and  decided  by  two  forces:  the 
influence  of  The  Citizens  and  the  influence  of  the 
Canadian  preachers'  Duty  teaching.  Political  opin- 
ions and  traditions,  as  previously  understood,  played 
no  part  whatever." 

Of  course,  it  seems  natural  enough  now  that  the 
British  public  should  be  united  in  matters  of  national 
and  imperial  import;  but  those  whose  memories  are 
long  enough  will  bear  me  out  in  saying  that  in  pre- 
vious elections  nine  voters  in  ten  had  been  guided,  not 
by  any  question  of  the  needs  of  the  country  or  the 
Empire,  but  by  their  support  of  this  party  or  of  that, 
of  this  colour  or  of  that.  Our  politicians  had  strenu- 
ously supported  the  preposterous  faction  system,  and 
fanned  party  rivalry  in  every  way,  because  they 
recognized  that  it  gave  them  personal  power  and 
aggrandizement,  which  they  had  long  placed  before 
any  consideration  of  the  common  weal.  By  this  they 
had  brought  shame  and  disaster  upon  the  nation,  in 
precisely  the  same  manner  that  the  same  results  had 
been  produced  by  the  same  means,  when  these  were 
used  by  the  oligarchs  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  prior  to 
the  downfall  of  the  Netherlands. 

Indeed,  for  some  time  before  the  invasion  our  poli- 
ticians might  have  been  supposed  to  be  modelling 
their  lives  and  policy  entirely  upon  those  of  the 
Dutch  Republic  in  the  eighteenth  century;  particu- 

320 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

larly  with  regard  to  their  mercenary  spoliation  of  the 
nation's  defence  forces,  and  their  insane  pertinacity 
in  clinging  to  the  policy  of  "  cheapness,"  which  killed 
both  the  manufacturing  and  the  agricultural  indus- 
tries of  the  country,  by  allowing  other  properly  pro- 
tected nations  to  oust  our  producers  from  all  foreign 
markets,  and  to  swamp  our  home  markets  with  their 
surplus  stocks.  Down  to  the  minutest  detail,  the  same 
causes  and  actions  had  produced  the  same  results  a 
century  earlier  in  the  Netherlands;  and  even  as, 
first,  King  William  of  Prussia,  and  then  revolution- 
ary France,  had  devastated  the  Netherlands,  so  had 
the  Kaiser's  legions  overrun  England.  It  was  not 
for  lack  of  warning  that  our  politicians  had  blindly 
followed  so  fatal  a  lead.  "  The  Destroyers  "  were 
still  being  warned  most  urgently  at  the  very  time 
of  the  invasion  by  public  speakers,  and  in  such  lucid 
works  as  Ellis  Barker's  The  Rise  and  Decline  of  the 
Netherlands. 

In  spite  of  the  emphatically  non-party  character 
of  The  Citizens'  campaign,  John  Crondall  kept  in 
close  touch  throughout  with  all  his  political  friends, 
and  very  many  members  of  Parliament  were  among 
our  leading  workers.  My  chief's  idea  was  that,  when 
the  elections  drew  near,  we  should  cease  to  map  out 
our  movements  in  accordance  with  those  of  the  Cana- 
dian preachers,  and  allow  them  to  be  guided  by  the 
exigencies  of  the  electoral  campaign ;  bringing  all 
our  influence  to  bear  wherever  we  saw  weakness  in  the 
cause  of  patriotism  and  reform. 

Already  we  had  arrangements  made  for  leading 
members  of  The  Citizens  to  address  meetings 

321 


THE    MESSAGE 

throughout  the  elections  at  a  good  many  centres. 
But,  before  the  electioneering  had  gone  far,  it  became 
evident  that  more  had  already  been  accomplished  than 
we  supposed.  Candidates  who  came  before  their  con- 
stituents with  any  kind  of  party  programme  were 
either  angrily  howled  down  or  contemptuously  ig- 
nored. Old  supporters  of  "  The  Destroyers,"  who 
ventured  upon  temporizing  tactics,  were  perempto- 
rily faced  with  demands  for  straight-out  declara- 
tions of  policy  upon  the  single  issue  of  patriotic 
reform  and  duty  to  the  State.  With  a  single  excep- 
tion, the  actual  members  of  the  Cabinet  in  "  The 
Destroyers' '  Administration  refrained  from  any 
attempt  to  secure  reelection. 

Such  an  electoral  campaign  had  never  before  been 
known  in  England.  Candidates  who,  even  inadvert- 
ently, used  such  words  as  "  Conservative,"  "  Radi- 
cal," or  "  Liberal,"  were  hissed  into  silence.  Even 
the  word  "  Labour  "  was  taboo,  so  far  as  it  referred 
to  any  political  party.  "  Duty,"  "  Patriotism," 
"Defence,"  "Citizenship,"  "United  Empire," 
"  British  Federation,"  and,  again,  ringing  loudly 
above  all  other  cries,  "  Duty "  —  those  were  the 
watchwords  and  the  platforms  of  the  invasion  year 
elections.  The  candidate  who  promised  relief  from 
taxation  was  laughed  at.  The  candidate  who  prom- 
ised legislation  directed  toward  the  citizen's  defence 
of  the  citizen's  hearth  and  home,  was  cheered  to  the 
echo. 

The  one  member  of  "  The  Destroyers'  "  Adminis- 
tration who  sought  reelection,  found  it  well  to  assert 
the  claims  of  his  youth  by  making  a  public  recanta- 

322 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

tion  of  all  his  previously  expressed  views  and  policy, 
and  seeking  to  outdo  every  one  else  in  the  direction 
of  patriotic  reform.  Though  he  gulled  nobody,  he 
was  listened  to  good-humouredly,  and  defeated  with 
great  ease  by  Abel  Winchester,  the  Australian,  who 
saw  years  of  work  before  him,  in  conjunction  with 
Forbes  Thompson,  in  the  supervision  of  village  rifle 
corps  throughout  the  country. 

In  many  ways  the  country  had  never  known  a 
Parliamentary  election  so  constructive;  in  one  re- 
spect it  was  absolutely  destructive.  It  destroyed  all 
previously  existing  political  parties.  No  single  mem- 
ber was  returned  as  the  representative  of  a  previously 
existing  party.  The  voters  of  Britain  had  refused 
to  consider  any  other  than  the  one  issue  of  patriotic 
reform:  the  all-British  policy,  as  it  was  called;  and 
the  consequence  was,  that  when  Parliament  assembled 
it  was  found  that  the  House  of  Commons  could  no 
longer  boast  possession  of  an  Opposition. 

The  members  of  that  assembly  had  been  sent  to 
St.  Stephens  to  busy  themselves,  in  unison,  with  the 
accomplishment  of  a  common  end ;  and  if  one  among 
them  should  waste  the  time  of  the  House  by  any  form 
of  obstruction,  he  could  only  do  so  by  breaking  the 
pledges  upon  the  strength  of  which  he  had  been 
elected.  This  fact  was  clearly  set  forth  in  the  Speech 
from  the  Throne,  delivered  by  the  King  in  person. 
The  business  of  Parliament  was  in  full  swing  before 
its  second  sitting  was  far  advanced.  Though  then  an 
aged  man,  the  famous  statesman  to  whom  the  King 
had  entrusted  the  task  of  forming  a  new  Cabinet  bore 
himself  with  the  vigour  of  early  manhood,  and  no 

323 


THE    MESSAGE 

Prime  Minister  had  ever  faced  Parliament  with  so 
great  a  driving  power  behind  him  of  unity,  confidence, 
and  national  sympathy.  The  fact  that  for  years  his 
name  had  been  most  prominently  associated  with 
every  movement  making  for  unity  within  the  Empire ; 
that  he  had  striven  valiantly  for  many  years  against 
the  anti-British  forces  of  disintegration ;  this  was 
admitted  to  augur  well  for  the  success  of  the  Confer- 
ence of  Colonial  representatives  then  holding  its  first 
sitting  in  historic  Westminster  Hall. 

Meantime,  the  patriotic  enthusiasm  of  the  general 
public  seemed  to  have  been  greatly  heightened  by  the 
result  of  the  general  elections.  By  common  consent 
a  note  of  caution,  of  warning,  took  the  place  of  the 
stirring  note  of  appeal  and  stimulation  which  had 
formerly  characterized  every  public  address  delivered 
under  the  auspices  of  The  Citizens.  Almost  without 
invitation  now  the  cream  of  the  country's  manhood 
flocked  into  our  travelling  headquarters  for  enrol- 
ment on  the  roster  of  The  Citizens;  and:  "Hasten 
slowly  —  and  silently,"  became  John  Crondall's  coun- 
sel to  all  our  supporters. 

The  effect  upon  the  whole  public  of  this  counsel  of 
caution  and  restraint  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
features  of  that  period ;  and  it  showed,  more  clearly, 
I  think,  than  anything  else,  the  amazing  depth  and 
strength  of  the  influence  exerted  by  the  Canadian 
preacher's  Duty  teaching.  Our  relations  with  the 
Power  to  which  we  were  in  effect  a  people  in  vassalage, 
and  payers  of  tribute,  demanded  at  this  stage  the 
exercise  of  the  most  cautious  restraint;  and  finely 
the  people  responded  to  this  demand.  In  his  His- 

324 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

tory  of  the  Revival,  Charles  Corbett  says,  with  good 
reason : 

"  It  was  the  time  of  waiting,  of  cautious  prepara- 
tion, of  enthusiasm  restrained  and  harnessed  to  pru- 
dence, which  must  really  be  regarded  as  the  proba- 
tionary era  of  the  Revival.  It  is  in  no  sense  a 
depreciation  of  the  incalculable  value  of  the  work 
done  by  the  Canadian  apostles  of  the  new  faith,  to 
say  that  their  splendid  efforts  might  well  have  proved 
of  no  more  than  transitory  effect,  but  for  that  stern, 
silent  period  of  repression,  of  rigid,  self -administered 
discipline,  which  followed  the  access  to  office  of  the 
first  Free  Government.1  That  period  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  crucible  in  which  British  Christianity 
was  tested  and  proven ;  in  which  the  steel  of  the  new 
patriotism  was  tempered  and  hardened  to  invincible 
durability.  The  Canadian  preachers  awakened  the 
people ;  The  Citizens  set  them  their  task ;  the  period 
of  waiting  schooled  them  in  the  spirit  of  the  twen- 
tieth century,  the  key-note  of  which  is  discipline,  the 
meaning  of  which  is  Duty." 

I  do  not  regard  that  as  a  statement  of  more  than 
the  truth;  and  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  easy  to 
overrate,  either  the  value  of  the  period  or  the  excel- 
lence of  the  response  to  the  demand  it  made  upon 
them.  The  only  dissatisfied  folk  were  the  publicans 
and  the  theatre  and  music-hall  lessees.  The  special 
journals  which  represented  the  interests  of  this  class 
—  caterers  for  public  amusement  and  public  dissipa- 

1  This  title,  applied  by  the  Prince  of  Wales  in  a  speech  delivered 
at  the  Guildhall  to  the  first  Parliament  which  met  without  an 
Opposition,  remained  in  use  for  a  number  of  years  afterwards. 

325 


THE    MESSAGE 

tion  —  were  full  of  covert  raillery  against  what  they 
called  the  new  Puritanism.  Their  raillery  was  no 
more  than  covert,  however ;  the  spirit  of  the  time  was 
too  strong  to  permit  more  than  that,  and  I  do  not 
think  it  produced  any  effect  worth  mentioning. 

Here  again  our  difficulties  proved  real  blessings  in 
disguise.  The  burden  of  invasion  taxation  was  heavy ; 
all  classes  felt  the  monetary  pinch  of  it,  apart 
altogether  from  the  humiliation  of  the  German  occu- 
pation ;  and  this  helped  very  materially  in  the  devel- 
opment of  common  sense  ideals  regarding  economy 
and  simple  living.  Not  for  nothing  had  John 
Crondall  called  the  Canadian  preachers  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  hour.  One  saw  very  plainly,  in  every 
walk  of  life,  a  steadily  growing  love  of  sobriety. 
The  thing  was  perhaps  most  immediately  noticeable 
in  the  matter  of  the  liquor  traffic.  Throughout  the 
country,  those  public-houses  and  hotels  which  were  in 
reality  only  drinking-shops  were  being  closed  up  by 
the  score,  or  converted  into  other  sorts  of  business 
premises,  for  lack  of  custom  in  their  old  misery- 
breeding  trade.  The  consumption  of  spirits,  and  of 
all  the  more  expensive  wines,  decreased  enormously. 
It  is  true  there  was  a  slight  increase  in  the  consump- 
tion of  cider,  and  the  falling  off  of  beer  sales  was 
slight.  But  this  was  because  a  large  number  of 
people,  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of  taking  far  less 
wholesome  and  more  costly  beverages,  now  made  use 
of  both  beer  and  cider.  It  was  not  at  all  evidence 
that  the  consumption  of  alcohol  among  the  poorer 
classes  maintained  its  old  level.  The  sales  of  gin,  for 

326 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

example,  fell  to  less  than  half  the  amounts  used  in 
the  years  before  the  invasion. 

And  this  was  no  more  than  one  aspect  of  the  great 
national  progress  toward  realization  of  the  ideals  of 
Duty  and  simple  living.  Extravagance  of  every  sort 
became,  not  merely  unpopular,  but  hated  and  de- 
spised, as  evidence  of  unpatriotic  feeling.  In  this, 
I  think,  the  women  of  England  deserve  the  greater 
meed  of  gratitude  and  respect.  The  change  they 
wrought  in  domestic  economy  was  not  less  than  won- 
derful when  one  realizes  how  speedily  it  was  brought 
about,  and  how  great  was  the  change.  For  in  the 
years  immediately  preceding  the  invasion  the  women 
had  been  sad  offenders  in  this  respect,  particularly, 
perhaps,  in  their  vulgar  and  ostentatious  extrava- 
gance in  matters  of  dress.  Now,  the  placards  of  the 
British  Commercial  Union,  exhorting  the  public  to 
"  Buy  British  Empire  Goods  only,"  became  out  of 
date  almost  as  soon  as  they  were  printed,  their  advice 
being  no  longer  needed. 

No  more  could  one  see  the  wives  and  daughters  of 
England  competing  with  their  unfortunate  sisters  of 
the  demi-monde  in  the  extravagance  of  their  attire. 
One  of  the  first  evidences  of  the  effect  of  the  Cana- 
dian preachers'  teaching  that  I  can  remember  was  the 
notable  access  of  decorum  and  simplicity  in  dress 
which  dominated  the  fashion  of  our  clothes.  In  this, 
as  in  sundry  other  matters,  I  think  we  were  helped 
by  the  unprecedented  number  of  Colonials  who  began 
to  flock  into  England  at  this  time  from  Canada, 
South  Africa,  and  Australia.  But,  despite  the  gen- 
eral desire  for  economy,  it  is  certain  that  from  that 

327 


THE    MESSAGE 

time  on  the  middle-class  folk  at  all  events  began  to 
wear  better  clothes  and  buy  better  commodities  gen- 
erally —  articles  which  lasted  longer,  and  were  better 
worth  using.  The  reason  of  this  was  all  a  part  of  the 
same  teaching,  the  same  general  tendency.  Shoddy 
goods,  representing  the  surplus  output  of  German 
and  American  firms,  could  no  longer  be  sold  in  Eng- 
land, however  low  the  prices  at  which  they  were 
offered;  and  shopkeepers  soon  found  that  they  lost 
standing  when  they  offered  such  goods  to  the  public. 
Thus  true  economy  and  true  patriotism  were  served 
at  one  and  the  same  time. 

Extravagance  in  eating,  dress,  entertainment,  and 
the  like,  became  that  year  more  disgraceful  than 
drunkenness  had  been  a  year  before  in  the  public 
eye.  In  the  same  way  we  attained  to  clearer  vision 
and  a  saner  sense  of  proportion  in  very  many  matters 
of  first-rate  social  importance.  I  remember  reading 
that  the  market  for  sixty  and  seventy  horse-power 
touring  motor-cars  had  almost  ceased  to  exist,  while 
the  demand  for  industrial  motor-vehicles,  and  for 
cars  of  something  under  twenty  horse-power,  had 
never  been  so  flourishing. 

Before  this  time  we  had  fallen  into  incredible  ex- 
travagance in  our  attitude  toward  all  the  parasitical 
occupations,  and  paid  absurd  tributes  of  respect  to 
many  of  those  who  waxed  fat  upon  pandering  to  our 
weaknesses.  This  passed  away  now,  like  a  single 
night's  dream,  and  incidentally  gave  rise  to  a  certain 
amount  of  complaining  from  those  who  suffered  by 
it.  But  the  public  was  no  more  inclined  to  heed  these 
complainings  than  it  was  to  fritter  away  its  time  and 

328 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    THE    AGE 

substance  in  drinking-bars  or  in  places  of  amusement. 
The  famous  "  Middle-class  Music-halls "  faded 
quickly  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten  failures,  and  the 
most  popular  of  public  performers  were  those  —  and 
they  were  not  a  few  —  who  forsook  grease-paint  for 
khaki,  and  posturing  on  stages  for  exercising  on 
rifle-ranges  and  drill-grounds. 

The  word  "  Puritanism  "  was  still  a  term  of  re- 
proach then,  by  virtue  of  its  old  associations;  but, 
as  we  see  things  nowadays,  there  is  room  only  for 
gladness  in  admitting  that  the  wave  of  feeling  which 
swept  through  the  homes  of  England  in  the  wake  of 
the  Canadian  preachers,  The  Citizens,  and  the  organ- 
izers of  the  village  rifle  corps,  was  in  very  truth  a 
mighty  revival  of  Puritanism,  backed  by  the  newly 
awakened  twentieth-century  spirit  of  Imperial  patri- 
otism, with  its  recognition  of  the  duty  of  loyalty, 
not  alone  to  country,  but  to  race  and  Empire.  Yes, 
it  was  true  Puritanism  —  stern,  unfaltering  Puritan- 
ism ;  and  it  came  to  England  not  a  day  too  soon. 
Without  it,  we  could  never  have  been  purged  of  our 
insensate  selfishness ;  without  it,  the  loose  agglomera- 
tion of  states,  then  called  the  British  Empire,  could 
never  have  been  welded  into  the  State ;  without  it,  the 
great  events  of  that  year  would  have  been  impossible, 
and  the  dominion  of  the  English-speaking  peoples 
must,  ere  this,  have  become  no  more  than  a  matter  of 
historical  interest. 


329 


XII 

BLOOD    IS    THICKER    THAN    WATEB 

Stern  lawgiver  !  yet  thou  dost  wear 
The  Godhead's  most  benignant  grace  ; 
Nor  know  we  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  thy  face  : 
Flowers  laugh  before  thee  on  their  beds, 
And  fragrance  in  thy  footing  treads  ; 
Thou  dost  preserve  the  Stars  from  wrong  ; 
And  the  most  ancient  Heavens,  through  thee,  are  fresh 

and  strong.  —  Ode  to  Duty. 

I  SUFFERED  no  change  so  far  as  Constance 
Grey's  demeanour  to  me  was  concerned ;  but  cer- 
tainly John  Crondall  had  altered  since  the  day  upon 
which  I  had  so  inopportunely  entered  his  room  when 
Constance  was  with  him.  At  times  I  fancied  his 
change  was  toward  me  personally,  and  I  thought  it 
curiously  unlike  the  man  to  cherish  any  sort  of  un- 
kindness  over  an  accident.  But  then,  again,  at  odd 
times,  I  watched  him  with  other  men  among  our  now 
considerable  train,  and  the  conclusion  was  borne  in 
upon  me  that  the  change  had  nothing  to  do  with  me, 
but  was  general  in  its  character.  He  was  more  stern, 
less  cheery,  and  far  more  reserved  than  before. 

And  this  I  thought  most  strange,  for  it  seemed  to 
me  that,  even  though  Constance  and  my  chief  might 
have  agreed  that  nothing  like  an  engagement  between 

330 


BLOOD  IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER 

them  must  come  till  our  work  was  done,  yet  the  under- 
standing which  could  lead  to  the  kiss  I  had  seen  was 
surely  warrant  enough  for  a  change  of  quite  another 
character  than  this  one.  I  thought  of  it  whenever  I 
took  Constance's  hand  in  greeting  her;  and  I  think 
my  eyes  must  sometimes  have  told  her  what  my  heart 
always  felt :  that  in  me,  this  right  to  do  as  Crondall 
had  done  would  have  seemed  an  entry  into  Paradise, 
let  circumstances  and  conditions  be  what  they  might. 
And  with  such  a  thought  I  would  recall  what,  to  me, 
would  never  be  the  least  of  Black  Saturday's  events: 
that  once  Constance  Grey  had  lain  in  my  arms  — 
unconsciously,  it  was  true;  and  that  upon  the  same 
occasion  I  had  kissed  her,  and  known  in  that  moment 
that  never  again  could  she  be  as  other  women  for  me. 

I  was  often  tempted  to  speak  to  Constance  of  the 
change  I  saw  in  John  Crondall,  and  one  day  in  Car- 
lisle I  yielded  to  the  temptation.  At  one  and  the  same 
time  I  both  craved  and  dreaded  definite  news  of  the 
understanding  between  the  woman  I  loved  and  the 
man  I  liked  and  respected  more  than  any  other.  I 
wanted  Constance's  confidence;  yet  I  felt  as  though 
my  life  would  be  stripped  bare  by  definite  knowledge 
that  she  was  betrothed.  So,  moth-like,  I  hovered 
about  the  perilous  subject,  with  a  nervous  endeavour 
to  lend  natural  composure  to  my  voice. 

"  Do  you  notice  any  particular  change  in  John 
Crondall  of  late  ?  "  I  asked.  And  it  seemed  to  me 
that  Constance  flushed  slightly  as  she  answered  me : 

"Change?     No.     Has  he  changed ?" 

"  Well,  he  does  not  seem  to  be  nearly  so  happy 

as "  And  there  I  broke  away  from  a  danger- 

331 


THE    MESSAGE 

ous  comparison,  and  substituted  —  "  as  he  was  awhile 
back." 

"  Really?    But  what  makes  you  think  that?  " 

"  I  fancy  he  is  much  more  reserved  —  less  frank 
and  more  preoccupied;  not  so  jolly,  in  fact,  as  he 
always  was.  I  have  thought  so  for  several  weeks." 

"  I  am  sorry,  very  sorry ;  and  I  do  hope  you  are 
mistaken.  Of  course  he  is  overworked  —  we  all  are ; 
but  that  never  hurt  him  before;  and  with  things 
going  so  splendidly Oh,  I  hope  you  are  mis- 
taken.'* 

"  Perhaps  so,"  I  said.  "  Certainly  I  think  he  has 
every  reason  to  be  happy  —  to  be  happy  and  proud ; 
every  reason." 

And  I  stopped  at  that;  but  Constance  made  no 
sign  to  me ;  and  I  wondered  she  did  not,  for  we  were 
very  intimate,  and  she  was  sweetly  kind  to  me  in  those 
days.  Indeed,  once  when  I  looked  up  sharply  at  her 
with  a  question  from  some  work  we  were  engaged 
upon,  I  saw  a  light  in  her  beautiful  eyes  which 
thrilled  my  very  heart  with  strange  delight.  Her 
expression  had  changed  instantly,  and  I  told  myself 
I  had  no  sort  of  business  to  be  thrilled  by  a  look  which 
was  obviously  born  of  reverie,  of  thoughts  about  John 
Crondall.  Such  a  sweet  light  of  love  her  eyes  held! 
I  told  myself  for  the  hundredth  time  that  no  consid- 
eration should  ever  cloud  the  happiness  of  the  man 
who  was  so  fortunate  as  to  inspire  it  —  to  have  won 
the  heart  which  looked  out  through  those  shining 
eyes. 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  I  had  much  leisure 
for  this  sort  of  meditation.  My  feeling  for  Con- 

332 


BLOOD  IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER 

stance  certainly  dominated  me.  Indeed,  it  accounted 
for  everything  of  import  in  my  life  —  for  my  general 
attitude  of  mind  and,  I  make  no  doubt,  for  my  being 
where  I  was  and  playing  the  part  I  did  play  in  The 
Citizens'  campaign.  But  our  life  was  not  one  that 
admitted  of  emotional  preoccupation  of  any  sort. 
We  were  too  close  to  the  working  mechanism  of 
national  progress.  There  never  was  more  absorbing 
work  than  the  making  and  enrolment  of  Citizens  at 
such  a  juncture  in  the  history  of  one's  country. 

The  spirit  of  our  work,  no  less  than  that  of  the 
Canadian  preachers'  teaching,  was  actually  in  the  air 
at  that  time.  It  dominated  English  life,  from  the 
mansions  of  the  great  landholders  to  the  cottages  of 
the  field-labourers  and  the  tenements  of  the  factory- 
hands.  It  affected  every  least  detail  of  the  people's 
lives,  and  coloured  all  thought  and  action  in  Eng- 
land —  a  process  which  I  am  sure  was  strengthened 
by  the  remarkable  growth  of  Colonial  sentiment 
throughout  the  country  at  this  time.  The  tide  of 
emigration  seemed  to  have  been  reversed  by  some 
subtle  process  of  nature :  the  strong  ebb  of  previous 
years  had  become  a  flow  of  immigration.  Every- 
where one  met  Canadians,  Australians,  South  Afri- 
cans, and  an  unusual  number  of  Anglo-Indians. 

"  We've  been  doing  pretty  well  of  late,"  said  one 
of  the  Canadians  to  me  when  I  commented  to  him 
upon  this  influx  into  the  Old  Country  of  her  Colonial 
sons ;  "  and  I  reckon  we  can  most  of  us  spare  time 
to  see  things  through  a  bit  at  Home.  The  way  our 
folk  look  at  it  on  the  other  side  is  this :  They  reckon 
we've  got  to  worry  through  this  German  business 

333 


THE    MESSAGE 

somehow  and  come  out  the  right  way  up  on  the  other 
side,  and  a  good  deal  more  solid  than  we  went  in. 
We  don't  reckon  there's  going  to  be  any  more  '  Little 
Englandism '  or  Cobdenism  after  this  job's  once  put 
through;  and  that's  a  proposition  we're  mighty 
keenly  interested  in,  you  see.  We  put  most  of  our 
eggs  into  the  Empire  basket,  away  back,  while  you 
people  were  still  busy  giving  Africa  to  the  Boers,  and 
your  Navy  to  the  dogs,  and  your  markets  to  Ger- 
many, and  your  trade  and  esteem  to  any  old  foreigner 
that  happened  along  with  a  nest  to  feather.  I  reckon 
that's  why  we're  most  of  us  here ;  and  maybe  that's 
why  we  mostly  bring  our  cartridge-belts  along.  A 
New  South  Wales  chap  told  me  last  night  you 
couldn't  get  up  a  cricket  match  aboard  a  P.  and  O. 
or  Orient  boat,  not  for  a  wager  —  nothing  but 
shooting  competitions  and  the  gentle  art  of  drill. 
You  say  '  Shun ! '  to  the  next  Colonial  you  meet,  and 
listen  for  the  click  of  his  heels !  Not  that  we  set 
much  store  by  that  business  ourselves,  but  we  learned 
about  the  Old  Country  taste  for  it  in  South  Africa, 
and  it's  all  good  practice,  anyhow,  and  good  disci- 
pline." 

But,  whatever  the  motives  and  causes  behind  their 
coming,  it  is  certain  that  an  astonishingly  large  num- 
ber of  our  oversea  kinsmen  were  arriving  in  England 
each  week;  and  I  believe  every  one  of  them  joined 
The  Citizens.  Their  presence  and  the  part  they 
played  in  affairs  had  a  marked  effect  upon  the 
spirit  of  the  time.  All  sorts  and  conditions  of 
people,  whose  thoughts  in  the  past  had  never 
strayed  far  from  their  own  parishes,  now  talked 

334 


BLOOD  IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER 

familiarly  of  people,  things,  and  places  Colonial. 
The  idea  of  our  race  being  one  big  tribe,  though 
our  homes  might  be  hemispheres  apart,  seemed  to 
me  to  take  root  for  the  first  time  in  the  minds  of  the 
general  public  at  about  this  period.  I  spoke  of  it  to 
John  Crondall,  and  reminded  him  how  he  had  urged 
this  idea  upon  us  years  before  in  Westminster  with 
but  indifferent  success. 

"  Ah,  well,"  he  said,  "  they  have  come  to  it  of  their 
own  accord  now ;  and  that  means  they'll  get  a  better 
grip  of  it  than  any  one  could  ever  have  given  them. 
That's  part  of  our  national  character,  and  not  a  bad 
part." 

We  were  heading  southward  through  Lancashire, 
when  the  news  reached  us  of  that  extension  of  the 
British  Constitution  which  first  gave  us  a  really  Impe- 
rial Parliament.  The  country  received  the  news 
with  a  deep-seated  and  sober  satisfaction.  Perhaps 
the  majority  hardly  appreciated  at  once  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  this  first  great  accomplishment  of  the 
Free  Government.  But  the  published  details  showed 
the  simplest  among  us  that  by  this  act  the  congeries 
of  scattered  nations  we  had  called  the  British  Empire 
were  now  truly  welded  into  an  Imperial  State.  It 
showed  us  that  we  English,  and  all  those  stalwart 
kinsmen  of  ours  across  the  Atlantic  and  on  the  far 
side  of  the  Pacific  —  north,  south,  east,  and  west, 
wherever  the  old  flag  flew  • —  were  now  actually  as 
well  as  nominally  subjects  of  one  Government,  and 
that  that  Government  would  for  the  future  be  com- 
posed of  men  chosen  as  their  representatives  by  the 
people  of  every  country  in  the  Empire;  men  drawn 

335 


THE    MESSAGE 

together  under  one  historic  roof  by  one  firm  purpose 
—  the  service  and  administration  of  a  great  Impe- 
rial State. 

As  I  say,  the  realization  produced  deep-seated  sat- 
isfaction. Of  late  we  had  learned  to  take  things 
soberly  in  England ;  but  there  was  no  room  for  doubt 
about  the  effect  of  this  news  upon  the  public.  The 
events  of  the  past  half-year,  the  pilgrimage  of  the 
Canadian  preachers,  the  new  devotion  to  Duty  (which 
seemed  almost  a  new  religion  though  it  was  actually 
but  an  awakening  to  the  religion  of  our  fathers),  the 
influx  among  us  of  Colonial  kinsmen,  and  the  cam- 
paign of  The  Citizens;  these  things  combined  to  give 
us  a  far  truer  and  more  keen  appreciation  of  the 
news  than  had  been  possible  before. 

Indeed,  looking  back  upon  my  experience  in  Fleet 
Street,  I  must  suppose  the  whole  thing  would  have 
been  impossible  before.  I  could  imagine  how  my 
Daily  Gazette  colleagues  would  have  scoffed  at  the 
Imperial  Parliament's  first  executive  act,  which  was 
the  devising  of  an  Imperial  Customs  Tariff  to  give 
free  trade  within  the  Empire,  and  complete  protection 
so  far  as  the  rest  of  the  world  was  concerned,  with 
strictly  reciprocatory  concessions  to  such  nations  as 
might  choose  to  offer  these  to  us,  and  to  no  others. 

Truly  Crondall  had  said  that  the  Canadian  preach- 
ers accomplished  more  than  they  knew.  The  sense  of 
duty,  individual  and  national,  burned  in  England  for 
the  first  time  since  Nelson's  day:  a  steady,  white 
flame.  The  acceptance  by  all  classes  of  the  commu- 
nity of  the  Imperial  Parliament's  programme  of  work 
proved  this.  The  public  had  been  shown  that  our 

336 


BLOOD  IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER 

duty  to  the  whole  Empire,  and  to  our  posterity,  de- 
manded this  thing.  That  was  enough.  Five  years 
before,  one  year  before,  the  country  had  been  shown 
very  clearly  where  its  duties  lay;  and  the  showing 
had  not  moved  five  men  in  a  hundred  from  their  blind 
pursuit  of  individual  pleasure  and  individual  gain. 
Army,  Navy,  Colonies,  Imperial  prestige  —  all  might 
go  by  the  board. 

But  now,  all  that  was  changed.  My  old  friend, 
Stairs,  with  Reynolds,  and  their  following,  had  given 
meaning  and  application  to  the  teaching  of  our  na- 
tional chastisement.  Religion  ruled  England  once 
more ;  and  it  was  the  religion,  not  of  professions  and 
asseverations,  but  of  Duty.  The  House  of  Commons 
and,  more  even  than  our  first  Free  Government,  the 
Imperial  Parliament  in  Westminster  Hall  had  behind 
them  the  absolute  confidence  of  a  united  people.  If 
England  could  have  been  convinced  at  that  time  that 
Duty  demanded  a  barefoot  pilgrimage  to  Palestine, 
I  verily  believe  Europe  would  have  speedily  been  dis- 
sected by  a  thousand-mile  column  of  marching  Brit- 
ishers. 

But  the  Canadian  preachers  taught  a  far  more 
practical  faith  than  that;  and,  behind  them,  John 
Crondall  and  his  workers  opened  the  door  upon  a 
path  more  urgent  and  direct  than  that  of  any  pil- 
grimage; the  path  to  be  trodden  by  all  British 
citizens  who  respected  the  white  hairs  of  their  fathers, 
and  the  innocent  trust  of  their  children ;  the  path  of 
Duty  to  God  and  King  and  Empire;  the  path  for 
all  who  could  hear  and  understand  the  call  of  our 
own  blood. 

337 


XIII 

ONE    SUMMER    MORNING 

To  humbler  functions,  awful  Power  ! 
I  call  thee  :  I  myself  commend 
Unto  thy  guidance  from  this  hour  ; 
O,  let  my  weakness  have  an  end  ! 
Give  unto  me,  made  lowly  wise, 
The  spirit  of  self-sacrifice ; 
The  confidence  of  reason  give  ; 
And  in  the  light  of  Truth  thy  bondman  let  me  live. 

Ode  to  Duty. 

WINTER  rushed  past  us  like  a  tropical  squall 
that  year,  and,  before  one  had  noted  the  beau- 
tiful coming  of  spring,  young  summer  was  upon  the 
land.  For  me,  serving  as  I  did  the  founder  and 
leader  of  The  Citizens,  life  was  filled  as  never  before. 
I  had  never  even  dreamed  of  a  life  so  compact  of  far- 
reaching  action,  of  intimate  relation  with  great 
causes. 

I  know  now  that  the  speed  and  strenuousness  of  it 
was  telling  upon  all  of  us.  But  we  did  not  realize  it 
then.  John  Crondall  seemed  positively  tireless.  The 
rest  of  us  had  our  moments  of  exhaustion,  but  never, 
I  think,  of  depression.  Our  work  was  too  finely  pro- 
ductive and  too  richly  rewarded  for  that.  But  we 
were  thin,  and  a  little  fine-drawn,  like  athletes  some- 
what overtrained. 

338 


ONE    SUMMER    MORNING 

Published  records  have  analyzed  our  progress 
through  the  country,  the  Canadian  preachers'  and 
our  own ;  but  nothing  I  have  read,  or  could  tell,  gives 
more  than  a  pale  reflection  of  that  triumphal  prog- 
ress, as  we  lived  it.  In  our  wake,  harlots  forsook 
harlotry  to  learn  something  of  nursing  by  doing  the 
rough  domestic  work  of  hospitals ;  famous  misers 
and  money-grubbers  gave  fortunes  to  The  Citizens' 
cause,  and  peers'  sons  left  country  mansions  to  learn 
defensive  arts,  in  the  ranks ;  drunkards  left  their 
toping  for  honest  work,  and  actresses  sold  their  ward- 
robes to  provide  funds  for  village  rifle  corps. 

There  was  no  light  sentiment,  no  sort  of  hysteria, 
at  the  back  of  these  miracles.  Be  it  remembered  that 
the  streets  of  English  towns  had  never  been  so  or- 
derly ;  public-houses  and  places  of  amusement  had 
never  been  so  empty ;  churches  and  chapels  had  never 
been  one-half  so  full.  During  that  year,  as  the  rec- 
ords show,  it  became  the  rule  in  many  places  for 
curates  and  deacons  to  hold  services  outside  the 
churches  and  chapels,  while  packed  congregations 
attended  the  services  held  within.  And  it  was  then 
that,  for  the  first  time,  we  saw  parsons  leading  the 
young  men  of  their  flocks  to  the  rifle-ranges,  and 
competing  with  them  there. 

The  lessons  we  learned  in  those  days  will  never,  I 
suppose,  seem  so  wonderful  to  any  one  else  as  to  those 
of  us  who  had  lived  a  good  slice  of  our  lives  before 
the  lessons  came ;  before  the  need  of  them  was  felt  or 
understood.  "  For  God,  our  Race,  and  Duty !  "  Con- 
ceive the  stirring  wonder  of  the  watchword,  when  it 
was  no  more  than  a  month  old ! 

339 


THE    MESSAGE 

The  seasons  rushed  by  us,  as  I  said.  But  one  short 
conversation  served  to  mark  for  me  the  coming  of 
summer.  We  had  reached  the  Surrey  hills  in  our 
homeward  progress  toward  London.  On  a  Saturday 
night  we  held  a  huge  meeting  in  Guildford,  and  very 
early  on  Sunday  morning  I  woke  with  a  curiously 
insistent  desire  to  be  out  in  the  open.  Full  of  this 
inclination  I  rose,  dressed,  and  made  my  way  down  to 
the  side  entrance  of  the  hotel,  where  a  few  servants 
were  moving  about  drowsily.  As  I  passed  out  under 
a  high  archway  into  the  empty,  sunny  street,  with  its 
clean  Sabbath  hush,  Constance  Grey  stepped  out 
from  the  front  entrance  to  the  pavement. 

"  I  felt  such  a  longing  to  be  out  in  the  open  this 
morning,"  she  said,  when  we  had  exchanged  greet- 
ing. "  It's  months  since  I  had  a  walk  for  the  walk's 
sake,  and  now  I  mean  to  climb  that  hill  that  we 
motored  over  from  Farnham  —  the  Hog's  Back,  as 
they  call  it." 

We  both  thought  it  deserved  some  more  beautiful 
name,  when  we  turned  on  its  crest  and  looked  back  at 
Guildford  in  the  hollow,  shining  in  summer  morning 
haze. 

"  Now  surely  that's  King  Arthur's  Camelot,"  said 
Constance. 

And  then  we  looked  out  over  the  delectable  valley 
toward  the  towers  of  Charterhouse,  across  the  roofs 
of  two  most  lovable  hamlets,  from  which  blue  smoke 
curled  in  delicate  spirals  up  from  the  bed  of  the 
valley,  through  a  nacreous  mist,  to  somewhere  near 
our  high  level. 

340 


ONE    SUMMER    MORNING 

We  gazed  our  fill,  and  I  only  nodded  when  Con- 
stance murmured: 

"  It's  worth  a  struggle,  isn't  it?  " 

I  knew  her  thought  exactly.  It  was  part  of  our 
joint  life,  of  the  cause  we  both  were  serving.  I  had 
been  pointing  to  some  object  across  the  valley,  and 
as  my  hand  fell  it  touched  Constance's  hand,  which 
was  cool  and  fresh  as  a  flower.  Mine  was  moist  and 
hot.  I  never  was  more  at  a  loss  for  words.  I  took 
her  hand  in  mine  and  held  it.  So  we  stood,  hand  in 
hand,  like  children,  looking  out  over  that  lovely  Eng- 
lish valley.  My  heart  was  all  abrim  with  tenderness ; 
but  I  had  no  words.  I  had  been  a  good  deal  moved 
by  the  curious  instance  of  telepathic  sympathy  or 
understanding  which  had  brought  me  from  my  bed 
that  morning  and  led  to  our  meeting. 

"  You  have  given  me  so  much,  taught  me  so  much, 
Constance,"  I  said  at  last. 

"  No,  no ;  I  am  no  teacher,"  she  said.  "  But  I  do 
think  God  has  taught  all  of  us  a  good  deal  lately  — 
all  our  tribe  —  Dick." 

There  was  a  rare  hint  of  nervousness  in  her  voice; 
and  I  felt  I  knew  the  cause.  I  felt  she  must  be  think- 
ing of  John  Crondall.  And  yet,  if  my  life  had  de- 
pended on  it,  I  could  not  help  saying: 

"  It  is  love  that  taught  me." 

Constance  drew  her  hand  away  gently. 

"  Would  not  the  Canadian  preachers  say  we  meant 
the  same  thing?  "  she  said.  I  had  my  warning;  but, 
though  haltingly,  the  words  would  come,  now. 

"  Ah,  Constance,  it  is  love  of  you,  I  mean  —  love 
of  you.  Oh,  yes,  I  know,"  I  hurried  on  now.  "  I 

341 


THE    MESSAGE 

know.  Have  no  fear  of  me.  I  understand.  But  it 
is  love  of  you,  Constance,  that  rules  every  minute  of 
my  life.  I  couldn't  alter  that  if  I  tried ;  and  —  and 
I  would  not  alter  it  if  I  had  to  die  for  it.  But  — 
you  must  forgive  me.  Tell  me  you  do  not  want  me 
to  stop  loving  you,  Constance.  You  see,  I  do  not 
ask  any  more  of  you.  I  understand.  But  —  let  me 
go  on  loving  you,  dear  heart,  because  that  means 
everything  to  me.  It  has  guided  me  in  everything 
I  have  done  since  that  day  you  came  to  me  in  The 
Mass  office.  Constance,  you  do  not  really  want  me 
to  stop  loving  you  ?  " 

I  was  facing  her  now;  kneeling  to  her,  in  my 
mind,  though  not  in  fact.  Her  head  was  bowed 
toward  me.  Then  she  raised  her  glorious  eyes,  and 
gave  to  me  the  full  tender  sweetness  of  them. 

"  No,  Dick,"  she  said,  quite  firmly,  but  soft  and 
low ;  "  I  don't  want  you  ever  to  stop  loving  me." 

Whatever  else  Fate  brings  or  takes  from  me,  I 
shall  never  lose  the  lovely  music  of  those  words.  That 
is  mine  for  ever. 


842 


XIV 

"  FOR    GOD,    OUE    RACE,    AND    DUTY  " 

Soldiers,  prepare  ?    Our  cause  is  Heaven's  cause  ; 
Soldiers,  prepare  !    Be  worthy  of  our  cause  : 
Prepare  to  meet  our  fathers  in  the  sky  : 
Prepare,  O  troops  that  are  to  fall  to-day ! 
Prepare,  prepare. 

Alfred  shall  smile,  and  make  his  harp  rejoice  ; 
The  Norman  William,  and  the  learned  Clerk, 
And  Lion-Heart,  and  black-browed  Edward,  with 
His  loyal  queen  shall  rise,  and  welcome  us  I 

Prepare,  prepare.  —  BLAKE. 

WE  had  two  other  meetings  before  finally  taking 
train  for  London;  but  virtually  our  cam- 
paign was  brought  to  an  end  at  Guildford.  Our 
peregrination  ended  there,  but  the  Canadian  preach- 
ers continued  their  pilgrimage  till  long  afterwards. 
Scores  of  rich  men  were  anxious  to  finance  these  ex- 
pounders of  the  new  teaching,  and  even  to  build  them 
churches.  But  Stairs  and  Reynolds  were  both  agreed 
in  wanting  no  churches.  Their  mission  was  to  the 
public  as  a  whole. 

When  we  returned  to  our  headquarters  in  London, 
the  membership  of  The  Citizens  stood  within  a  few 
hundreds  of  three  million  and  a  half  of  able-bodied 
men.  And  still  new  members  were  being  sworn  in 

343 


THE    MESSAGE 

every  day.  Some  few  of  these  members  had  contrib- 
uted as  much  as  five  thousand  pounds  to  our  funds. 
Very  many  had  contributed  a  fifth  of  that  sum,  and 
very  many  more  had  given  in  hundreds  of  pounds. 
There  were  some  who  gave  us  pence,  and  they  were 
very  cordially  thanked,  giving  as  they  did  from  the 
slenderest  of  purses.  There  were  women  who  had 
sold  dresses  and  j  ewels  for  us,  hundreds  of  them ; 
and  there  were  little  children  whose  pocket-money  had 
helped  to  swell  the  armament  and  instruction  funds. 
Joseph  Farquharson,  the  well-known  coal  and  iron 
magnate,  who  had  been  famous  for  his  "  Little  Eng- 
land "  sentiments  —  a  man  who  had  boasted  of  his 
parochialism  —  must  have  learned  very  much  from 
the  invasion  and  the  teaching  of  the  new  movement. 
He  gave  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  to  The  Citi- 
zens after  John  Crondall's  first  address  in  Newcastle. 
When  Crondall  attended  the  famous  Council  at  the 
War  Office,  he  did  so  as  the  founder  and  representa- 
tive of  the  most  formidable  organization  ever  known 
in  England.  He  had  no  official  standing  at  the  Coun- 
cil: he  took  his  seat  there  as  an  unofficial  commoner. 
Yet,  in  a  sense,  he  held  the  defensive  strength  of 
Britain  in  his  hand.  But  several  of  the  Ministers  and 
officials  who  formed  that  Council  were  members  of 
our  Executive,  and  our  relations  with  the  Government 
were  already  well  defined  and  thoroughly  harmoni- 
ous. It  was  from  the  War  Office  that  we  received  the 
bronze  badge  which  was  supplied  to  every  sworn 
Citizen  and  bore  our  watchword  —  "  For  God,  our 
Race,  and  Duty  " ;  and  the  Government  had  given 
substantial  aid  in  the  matter  of  equipment  and  in- 

344 


"FOR  GOD,  OUR  RACE,  AND  DUTY" 

struction.  But  now  John  Crondall  represented  three 
million  and  a  half  of  British  men,  all  sworn  to  re- 
spond instantly  to  his  call  as  President  of  the  Execu- 
tive. And  every  Citizen  had  some  training  —  was 
then  receiving  some  training. 

"  The  Canadian  preachers  waked  and  inspired  the 
people;  we  swore  them  in,"  said  John  Crondall  mod- 
estly. "  Their  worth  is  the  faith  in  them,  and  their 
faith  spells  Duty.  That's  what  makes  The  Citizens 
formidable." 

"  The  grace  of  God,"  Stairs  called  it ;  and  so  did 
many  others. 

Crondall  bowed  to  that,  and  added  a  line  from  his 
favourite  poet :  "  Then  it's  the  grace  of  God  in  those 
'  Who  are  neither  children  nor  gods,  but  men  in  a 
world  of  men ! '  "  he  said. 

No  wise  man  has  ever  doubted,  so  far  as  I  know, 
that  simple  piety,  simple  religion,  "  British  Chris- 
tianity," was  the  motive  force  at  work  behind  the 
whole  of  the  revival  movement.  Without  that  foun- 
dation, the  enduring  results  achieved  must  have  been 
impossible.  But  this  was  entirely  unlike  any  previ- 
ously known  religious  revival,  in  that  it  supplied  no 
emotional  food  whatever.  There  was  no  room  for 
sentimentality,  still  less  for  hysteria,  in  the  accepta- 
tion of  George  Stairs's  message  from  that  "  Stern 
Daughter  of  the  Voice  of  God,"  whose  name  is  Duty. 
Tears  and  protestations  were  neither  sought  nor 
found  among  converts  to  the  faith  which  taught  all 
to  be  up  and  doing  in  Duty's  name. 

From  the  records,  I  know  that  eight  weeks  passed 
after  the  famous  Council  at  the  War  Office  before 

345 


THE    MESSAGE 

England  spoke.  When  I  say  that  during  that  time 
I  acted  as  my  chief's  representative  in  controlling 
an  office  of  over  ninety  clerks  (all  drilled  men  and 
fair  shots),  besides  several  times  traversing  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  kingdom  on  special  mis- 
sions, it  will  be  understood  that  the  period  was  to  me  a 
good  deal  more  like  eight  days.  During  that  time, 
too,  I  was  able  to  help  Constance  Grey  in  her  organi- 
zation of  the  women  helpers'  branch  of  The  Citizens, 
in  which  over  nine  thousand  members  were  enrolled. 
Constance  had  an  executive  committee  of  twenty-five 
volunteer  workers,  who  spent  money  and  energy  un- 
grudgingly in  helping  her. 

We  kept  in  close  touch  with  the  heads  of  provincial 
committees  during  the  whole  of  that  period,  and  sev- 
eral times  we  communicated  by  means  of  printed 
circular  letters,  franked  gratis  for  us  by  the  War 
Office,  with  every  single  Citizen. 

Then  came  the  day  of  the  now  historic  telegram 
which  the  Post  Office  was  authorized  to  transmit  to 
every  sworn  Citizen  in  the  kingdom : 

"  Be  ready !    '  For  God,  our  Race,  and  Duty.'  " 

This  was  signed  by  John  Crondall,  and  came  after 
some  days  of  detailed  instruction  and  preparation. 

It  has  been  urged  by  some  writers  that  the  Govern- 
ment was  at  fault  in  the  matter  of  its  famous  declara- 
tion of  war  with  Germany.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  for  the  sake  of  a  point  of  etiquette,  the  Govern- 
ment had  no  right  to  yield  a  single  advantage  to  an 
enemy  whose  conduct  toward  us  had  shown  neither 
mercy  nor  courtesy.  There  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said 
for  this  criticism;  but,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  I 

346 


"  FOR  GOD,  OUR  RACE,  AND  DUTY " 

believe  that  every  Englishman  is  glad  at  heart  that 
our  Government  took  this  course.  I  believe  it  added 
strength  to  our  fighting  arm;  I  believe  it  added 
weight  and  consequence  to  the  first  blows  struck. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  there  was  no  sign  of  hesitancy 
or  weakness  in  the  action  of  the  Government  when 
the  declaration  had  once  been  made;  and  it  speaks 
well  for  the  deliberate  thoroughness  of  all  prepara- 
tions that,  twenty-four  hours  after  the  declaration, 
every  one  of  the  nine  German  garrisons  in  the  king- 
dom was  hemmed  in  by  land  and  by  sea.  On  the  land 
side  the  Germans  were  besieged  by  more  than  three 
million  armed  men.  Almost  the  whole  strength  of 
the  British  Navy  was  then  concentrated  upon  the 
patrolling  of  our  coasts  generally,  and  the  blockad- 
ing of  the  German-garrisoned  ports  particularly. 
Thirty-six  hours  had  not  passed  when  the  German 
battle-ships  Hohenzottern  and  Kaiserin,  and  the  cruis- 
ers Elbe  and  Deutschland,  were  totally  destroyed  off 
Portsmouth  and  Cardiff  respectively;  Britain's  only 
loss  at  that  time  being  the  Corfe  Castle,  almost  the 
smallest  among  the  huge  flotilla  of  armed  merchant- 
men which  had  been  subsidized  and  fitted  out  by  the 
Government  that  year. 

I  believe  all  the  authorities  had  admitted  that,  once 
it  was  known  that  our  declaration  had  reached  Ber- 
lin, the  British  tactics  could  not  have  been  excelled 
for  daring,  promptitude,  and  devastating  thorough- 
ness. It  is  true  that  Masterman,  in  his  well-known 
History  of  the  War,  urges  that  much  loss  of  life 
might  have  been  spared  at  Portsmouth  and  Devon- 
port  "  if  more  deliberate  and  cautious  tactics  had 

347 


been  adopted,  and  the  British  authorities  had  been 
content  to  achieve  their  ends  a  little  less  hurriedly." 
But  Masterman  is  well  answered  by  the  passage  in 
General  Hatfield's  Introduction  to  Low's  important 
work,  which  tells  us  that: 

"  The  British  plan  of  campaign  did  not  admit  of 
leisurely  tactics  or  great  economy.  Britain  was 
striking  a  blow  for  freedom,  for  her  very  life.  Fail- 
ure would  have  meant  no  ordinary  loss,  but  mere  ex- 
tinction. The  loss  of  British  life  in  such  strongly 
armed  centres  as  Portsmouth  was  very  great.  It 
was  the  price  demanded  by  the  immediate  end  of 
Britain's  war  policy,  which  was  to  bring  the  enemy 
to  terms  without  the  terrible  risks  which  delay  would 
have  represented,  for  the  outlying  and  comparatively 
defenceless  portions  of  our  own  Empire.  When  the 
price  is  measured  and  analyzed  in  cold  blood,  the 
objective  should  be  as  carefully  considered.  The 
price  may  have  been  high ;  the  result  purchased  was 
marvellous.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  too,  that 
Britain's  military  arm,  while  unquestionably  long  and 
strong  (almost  unmanageably  so,  perhaps),  was 
chiefly  composed  of  what,  despite  the  excellent  in- 
structive routine  of  The  Citizens,  must,  from  the 
technical  standpoint,  be  called  raw  levies.  Yet  that 
great  citizen  army,  by  reason  of  its  fine  patriotism, 
was  able  in  less  than  one  hundred  hours  from  the 
time  of  the  declaration,  to  defeat,  disarm,  and  extin- 
guish as  a  fighting  force  some  three  hundred  thou- 
sand of  the  most  perfectly  trained  troops  in  the 
world.  That  was  the  immediate  objective  of  Britain's 
war  policy ;  or,  to  be  exact,  the  accomplishment  of 

348 


"  FOR  GOD,  OUR  RACE,  AND  DUTY  " 

that  in  one  week  was  our  obj  ect.  It  was  done  in  four 
days;  and,  notwithstanding  the  unexpected  turn  of 
events  afterwards,  no  military  man  will  ever  doubt 
that  the  achievement  was  worth  the  price  paid.  It 
strengthened  Britain's  hand  as  nothing  else  could 
have  strengthened  it.  It  gave  us  at  the  outset  that 
unmistakable  lead  which,  in  war  as  in  a  race,  is  of 
incalculable  value  to  its  possessors." 

And,  the  General  might  have  added,  as  so  many 
other  writers  have,  that  no  civilized  and  thinking  men 
ever  went  more  cheerfully  and  bravely  to  their  deaths, 
or  earned  more  gladly  the  eternal  reward  of  Duty 
accomplished,  than  did  The  Citizens,  the  "  raw  lev- 
ies," with  their  stiffening  of  regulars,  who  fell  at 
Portsmouth  and  Devonport.  They  were  not  per- 
fectly disciplined  men,  in  the  professional  sense,  or 
one  must  suppose  they  would  have  paid  some  heed  to 
General  Sir  Robert  Calder's  repeated  orders  to  re- 
tire. But  they  were  British  citizens  of  as  fine  a  cal- 
ibre as  any  Nelson  or  Wellington  knew,  and  they 
carried  the  Sword  of  Duty  that  day  into  the  camp 
of  an  enemy  who,  with  all  his  skill,  had  not  learned, 
till  it  was  written  in  his  blood  for  survivors  to  read, 
that  England  had  awakened  from  her  long  sleep. 
For  my  part,  if  retrospective  power  were  mine,  I 
would  not  raise  a  finger  to  rob  those  stern  converts 
of  their  glorious  end. 

It  is  easy  to  be  wise  after  the  event,  but  no  Govern- 
ment could  have  foretold  the  cynical  policy  adopted 
by  Berlin.  No  one  could  have  guessed  that  the  Ger- 
man Government  would  have  said,  in  effect,  that  it 
was  perfectly  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  nearly  three 

349 


THE     MESSAGE 

hundred  thousand  of  its  own  loyal  subjects  and  de- 
fenders, and  that  Britain  might  starve  or  keep  them 
at  her  own  pleasure.  After  all,  the  flower  of  the 
German  Army  was  in  England,  and  only  a  Govern- 
ment to  the  last  degree  desperate,  unscrupulous,  and 
cynical  could  have  adopted  Germany's  callous  atti- 
tude at  this  juncture. 

Britain's  aim  was  not  at  all  the  annihilation  of 
Germany,  but  the  freeing  of  her  own  soil;  and  it 
was  natural  that  our  Government  should  have  acted 
on  the  assumption  that  this  could  safely  be  demanded 
when  we  held  a  great  German  army  captive,  by  way 
of  hostage.  The  British  aim  was  a  sound  one,  and  it 
was  attained.  That  it  did  not  bring  about  the  re- 
sults anticipated  was  due  to  no  fault  in  our  Govern- 
ment, nor  even  to  any  lack  of  foresight  upon  their 
part;  but  solely  to  the  cynical  rapacity  of  a  ruler 
whose  ambition  had  made  him  fey,  or  of  a  Court  so 
far  out  of  touch  with  the  country  which  supported 
it  as  to  have  lost  its  sense  of  honour. 

In  the  meantime,  though  saddled  with  a  huge  army 
of  prisoners,  and  the  poorer  by  her  loss  of  eighteen 
thousand  gallant  citizens,  Britain  had  freed  her 
shores.  In  an  even  shorter  time  than  was  occupied 
over  the  invasion,  the  yoke  of  the  invader  had  been 
torn  in  sunder,  and  not  one  armed  enemy  was  left  in 
England.  And  for  our  losses  —  the  shedding  of  that 
British  blood  partook  of  the  nature  of  a  sacrament; 
it  was  life-giving.  By  that  fiery  jet  we  were  baptized 
again.  England  had  found  herself.  Once  more  His 
people  had  been  found  worthy  to  bear  the  Sword  of 
the  Lord.  Britain  that  had  slept,  was  wide-eyed  and 

350 


"  FOR  GOD,  OUR  RACE,  AND  DUTY  " 

fearless  again,  as  in  the  glorious  days  which  saw  the 
rise  of  her  Empire.  Throughout  the  land  one  watch- 
word ran :  "  For  God,  our  Race,  and  Duty  1 "  We 
had  heard  and  answered  to  the  poet's  call: 

Strike  —  for  your  altars  and  your  fires  ; 
Strike  —  for  the  green  graves  of  your  sires ; 
God,  and  your  native  land! 

I  find  it  easy  to  believe  and  read  between  the  lines 
of  the  grim  official  record  which  told  us  that  outside 
Portsmouth  "  white-haired  men  smiled  over  the  graves 
of  their  sons,  and  armed  youths  were  heard  singing 
triumphant  chants  while  burying  their  fathers." 

Meantime,  simple  folk  in  the  southern  country  lanes 
of  Dorset  and  of  Hampshire  (Tarn  Regis  yokels 
among  them,  no  doubt)  heard  the  dull,  rumbling  thun- 
der of  great  guns  at  sea,  and  the  talk  ran  on  naval 
warfare. 


351 


XV 


"  SINGLE    HEART    AND    SINGLE    SWORD 

Yea,  though  we  sinned  —  and  our  rulers  went  from  righteousness — 
Deep  in  all  dishonour  though  we  stained  our  garment's  hem. 


Hold  ye  the  Faith  —  the  Faith  our  fathers  sealed  us ; 
Whoring  not  with  visions  —  overwise  and  overstate. 

Except  ye  pay  the  Lord 

Single  heart  and  single  sword, 
Of  your  children  in  their  bondage  shall  he  ask  them 

treble-tale  I 

RUDYARD    KIPLING. 

THE  learned  German,  Professor  Elberfeld,  has 
told  the  world,  in  sentences  of  portentous 
length  and  complication,  that  "  the  petty  trader's 
instincts  which  form  the  most  typical  characteristic 
of  the  British  race  "  came  notably  to  the  fore  in  our 
treatment  of  the  German  prisoners  of  war  who  were 
held  under  military  surveillance  in  the  British  ports 
which  they  had  garrisoned. 

The  learned  professor  notes  with  bitter  contempt 
that  no  wines,  spirits,  cigars,  or  "  other  customary 
delicacies  "  were  supplied  to  our  prisoners,  and  that 
the  German  officers  received  very  little  more  than  the 
rations  served  to  their  men.  The  professor  makes  no 
mention  of  one  or  two  other  pertinent  facts  in  this 
connection ;  as,  for  example,  that  none  of  these  "  cus- 

352 


"SINGLE  HEART  AND  SINGLE  SWORD" 

tomary  delicacies "  were  supplied  to  the  British 
troops.  We  may  endure  his  reproaches  with  the  more 
fortitude,  I  think,  when  we  remember  that  the  German 
Government  absolutely  ignored  our  invitation  to  send 
weekly  shipments  of  supplies  under  a  white  flag  for 
the  towns  they  had  garrisoned  on  British  soil. 

It  is  known  that  the  officers  in  command  of  the 
German  forces  in  England  had  previously  maintained 
a  very  lavish  and  luxurious  scale  of  living;  in  the 
same  way  that,  since  the  invasion  of  England,  ex- 
travagance was  said  to  have  reached  unparalleled 
heights  in  Germany  itself.  But  the  British  Govern- 
ment which  had  reached  depletion  of  our  own  sup- 
plies, by  assisting  our  prisoners  to  maintain  a 
luxurious  scale  of  living  while  held  as  hostages,  would 
certainly  have  forfeited  the  confidence  of  the  public, 
and  justly  so.  Upon  the  whole,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
German  sneers  at  British  parsimony  and  Puritanism 
may  fairly  be  accepted  as  tribute,  and,  as  such,  need 
in  no  sense  be  resented. 

As  soon  as  we  received  Germany's  cynical  reply 
to  Britain's  demand  for  a  complete  withdrawal  of  all 
the  invasion  claims,  it  became  evident  that  the  war  was 
to  be  a  prolonged  and  bitter  one,  and  that  no  further 
purpose  could  be  served  by  the  original  British  plan 
of  campaign,  which,  as  its  object  had  been  the  free- 
ing of  our  own  soil,  had  been  based  on  the  assumption 
that  the  defeat  and  capture  of  the  invader's  forces 
would  be  sufficient.  Troops  had  to  be  despatched  at 
once  to  South  Africa,  where  German  overlordship 
had  aroused  the  combined  opposition  of  the  Boers 
and  the  British.  This  opposition  burst  at  once  into 

353 


THE     MESSAGE 

open  hostility  immediately  the  news  of  England's 
declaration  of  war  reached  South  Africa.  While  the 
Boers  and  the  British,  united  in  a  common  cause,  were 
carrying  war  into  German  Southwest  Africa,  troops 
from  German  East  Africa  were  said  to  have  landed 
in  Delagoa  Bay,  and  to  be  advancing  southward. 

In  all  this,  the  British  cause  was  well  served  by 
Germany's  initial  blunder ;  by  the  huge  mistake  which 
cost  her  four-fifths  of  her  naval  strength  at  a  blow. 
This  mistake  in  Germany's  policy  was  distinctly  trace- 
able to  one  cause:  the  national  arrogance  which, 
since  the  invasion,  had  approached  near  to  madness ; 
which  had  now  led  Germany  into  contemptuously 
underrating  the  striking  power  still  remaining  in  the 
British  Navy.  It  was  true  that,  prior  to  the  invasion, 
our  Navy  had  been  consistently  starved  and  impover- 
ished by  "  The  Destroyers."  It  was  that,  of  course, 
which  had  first  earned  them  their  title.  But  Germany 
herself,  when  she  struck  her  great  blow  at  England, 
hardly  wounded  the  British  Navy  at  all.  Her  cun- 
ning had  drawn  our  ships  into  a  Mediterranean  im- 
passe when  they  were  sadly  needed  upon  our  coasts, 
and  her  strategy  had  actually  destroyed  one  British 
line  of  battle-ship,  one  cruiser,  and  two  gunboats.  But 
that  was  the  whole  extent  of  the  naval  damage  in- 
flicted by  her  at  the  time  of  the  invasion.  But  the 
lesson  she  gave  at  the  same  time  was  of  incalculable 
value  to  us.  The  ships  she  destroyed  had  been 
manned  by  practically  untrained,  short-handed  crews, 
hurriedly  rushed  out  of  Portsmouth  barracks.  Yet 
German  arrogance  positively  inspired  Berlin  with  the 
impression  that  the  Navies  of  the  two  countries  had 

354 


"  SINGLE  HEART  AND  SINGLE  SWORD  " 

tried  conclusions,  and  that  our  fleet  had  been  proved 
practically  ineffective. 

Prior  to  the  invasion  our  Navy  had  indeed  reached 
a  low  ebb.  Living  always  in  barracks,  under  the  per- 
nicious system  gradually  forced  upon  the  country  by 
"  The  Destroyers  "  in  the  name  of  economy,  our  blue- 
jackets had  fallen  steadily  from  their  one  high  stand- 
ard of  discipline  and  efficiency  into  an  incompetent, 
sullen,  half -mutinous  state,  due  solely  to  the  criminal 
parsimony  and  destructive  neglect  of  an  Administra- 
tion which  aimed  at  "  peace  at  any  price,"  and 
adopted,  of  all  means,  the  measures  most  calculated 
to  provoke  foreign  attack.  But,  since  the  invasion, 
an  indescribable  spirit  of  emulation,  a  veritable  fury 
of  endeavour,  had  welded  the  British  fleet  into  a  for- 
midable state  of  efficiency. 

First  "  The  Destroyers,"  actuated  by  a  combina- 
tion of  panic  and  remorse,  and  then  the  first  Free 
Government,  representing  the  convinced  feeling  of 
the  public,  had  lavished  liberality  upon  the  Navy 
since  the  invasion.  Increased  pay,  newly  awakened 
patriotism,  the  general  change  in  the  spirit  of  the  age, 
all  had  combined  to  fill  the  Admiralty  recruiting 
offices  with  applicants.  Almost  all  our  ships  had 
been  kept  practically  continuously  at  sea.  "  The 
Destroyers'  "  murderous  policy  in  naval  matters  had 
been  completely  reversed,  and  our  fleet  was  served 
by  a  great  flotilla  of  magnificently  armed  leviathans 
of  the  Mercantile  Marine,  including  two  of  the  fastest 
steamships  in  the  world,  all  subsidized  by  Govern- 
ment. 

We  know  now  that  exact  official  records  of  these 
355 


THE     MESSAGE 

facts  were  filed  in  the  Intelligence  Department  at 
Berlin.  But  German  arrogance  prohibited  their  right 
comprehension,  and  Britain's  declaration  of  war  was 
instantly  followed  by  an  Imperial  order  which,  in 
effect,  divided  the  available  strength  of  the  German 
Navy  into  eight  fleets,  and  despatched  these  to  eight 
of  the  nine  British  ports  garrisoned  by  German 
troops,  with  orders  of  almost  childish  simplicity. 
These  ports  were  to  be  taken,  and  British  insurrec- 
tion crushed,  ashore  and  afloat. 

If  the  German  Navy  had  been  free  of  its  Imperial 
Commander-in-chief,  and  of  the  insensate  arrogance 
of  his  entourage,  it  could  have  struck  a  terrible  blow 
at  the  British  Empire,  while  almost  the  whole  fight- 
ing strength  of  our  Navy  was  concentrated  upon  the 
defence  of  England.  As  it  was,  this  fine  opportunity 
was  flung  aside,  and  with  it  the  greater  part  of  Ger- 
many's fleet.  Divided  into  eight  small  squadrons, 
their  ships  were  at  the  mercy  of  our  concentrated 
striking  force.  Our  men  fell  upon  them  with  a  Ber- 
serker fury  born  of  humiliation  silently  endured,  and 
followed  by  eight  or  nine  months  of  the  finest  sort  of 
sea-training  which  could  possibly  be  devised. 

The  few  crippled  ships  of  the  German  fleet  which 
survived  those  terrible  North  Sea  and  Channel  en- 
gagements must  have  borne  with  them  into  their  home 
waters  a  bitter  lesson  to  the  ruler  whom  they  left,  so 
far  as  effective  striking  power  was  concerned,  without 
a  Navy. 

Here,  again,  critics  have  said  that  our  tactics 
showed  an  extravagant  disregard  of  cost,  both  as  to 
men  and  material.  But  here  also  the  hostile  critics 

356 


"  SINGLE  HEART  AND  SINGLE  SWORD" 

overlook  various  vital  considerations.  The  destruc- 
tion of  Germany's  sea-striking  power  at  this  juncture 
was  worth  literally  anything  that  Britain  could  give ; 
not  perhaps  in  England's  immediate  interest,  but  in 
the  interests  of  the  Empire,  without  which  England 
would  occupy  but  a  very  insignificant  place  among 
the  powers  of  civilization. 

Then,  too,  the  moral  of  our  bluejackets  has  to  be 
considered.  Since  the  invasion  and  the  sinking  of  the 
Dreadnought,  ours  had  become  a  Navy  of  Berserkers. 
The  Duty  teaching,  coming  after  the  invasion,  made 
running  fire  of  our  men's  blood.  They  fought  their 
ships  as  Nelson's  men  fought  theirs,  and  with  the 
same  invincible  success.  It  was  said  the  Terrible's 
men  positively  courted  the  penalty  of  mutiny  in  time 
of  war  by  refusing  to  turn  in,  in  watches,  after 
forty-two  hours  of  continuous  fighting.  There  re- 
mained work  to  be  done,  and  the  "  Terribles  "  refused 
to  leave  it  undone. 

The  commander  who  had  lessened  the  weight  of  the 
blow  struck  by  Britain's  Navy,  in  the  interests  of 
prudence  or  economy,  would  have  shown  himself  blind 
to  the  significance  of  the  new  spirit  with  which  Eng- 
land's awakening  had  endowed  her  sons;  the  stern 
spirit  of  the  twentieth-century  faith  which  gave  us 
for  watchword,  "  For  God,  our  Race,  and  Duty !  " 

With  the  major  portion  of  our  Navy  still  in  fight- 
ing trim,  and  twenty-five-knot  liners  speeding  south- 
ward laden  with  British  troops,  it  speedily  became 
evident  that  Germany's  chance  of  landing  further 
troops  in  South  Africa  was  hardly  worth  serious  con- 
sideration, now  that  her  naval  power  was  gone.  On 

357 


THE     MESSAGE 

the  other  hand,  it  was  known  that  the  enemy  had 
already  massed  great  bodies  of  troops  in  East  and 
Southwest  Africa,  and  it  became  the  immediate  busi- 
ness of  the  British  Admiralty  to  see  that  German 
oversea  communications  should  be  cut  off. 

Further,  we  had  to  face  ominous  news  of  German 
preparations  for  aggression  in  the  Pacific  and  in  the 
near  East,  with  persistent  rumours  of  a  hurriedly 
aggressive  alliance  with  Russia  for  action  in  the  Far 
East.  The  attitude  of  Berlin  itself  was  amazingly 
cynical,  as  it  had  been  from  the  very  time  of  the  un- 
provoked invasion  of  our  shores.  In  effect,  the 
Kaiser  said: 

"  You  hold  a  German  Army  as  prisoners  of  war, 
and  you  have  destroyed  my  Navy ;  but  you  dare  not 
invade  my  territory,  and  I  defy  you  to  hit  upon  any 
other  means  of  enforcing  your  demands.  You  can  do 
nothing  further." 

The  British  demands,  made  directly  the  German 
troops  in  England  were  in  our  hands,  were,  briefly, 
for  the  complete  withdrawal  of  the  whole  of  claims  en- 
forced by  Germany  at  the  time  of  the  invasion. 

That,  then,  was  the  position  when  I  returned  to  our 
London  headquarters  from  a  journey  I  had  under- 
taken for  my  chief  in  connection  with  the  work  of 
drafting  large  numbers  of  Citizens  back  from  the 
camps  into  private  life.  Various  questions  had  to  be 
placed  in  writing  before  every  Citizen  as  to  his  atti- 
tude in  the  matter  of  possible  future  calls  made  upon 
his  services.  I  had  only  heard  of  seven  cases  of  men 
physically  fit  failing  to  express  perfect  readiness  to 
respond  to  any  future  call  for  active  service  at  home 

358 


"  SINGLE  HEART  AND  SINGLE  SWORD  " 

or  abroad,  in  case  of  British  need.  Here  was  a  shield 
of  which  I  knew  both  sides  well.  The  thing  impressed 
me  more  than  I  can  tell,  or  most  folk  would  under- 
stand nowadays.  I  knew  so  well  how  the  god  of  busi- 
ness (which  served  to  cover  all  individual  pursuit  of 
money  or  pleasure)  would  have  been  invoked  to  prove 
the  utter  impracticability  of  this  —  one  short  year 
before.  I  looked  back  toward  my  Fleet  Street  days, 
and  I  thanked  God  for  the  awakening  of  England, 
which  had  included  my  own  awakening. 

My  return  to  London  was  a  matter  of  considerable 
personal  interest  to  me,  for  Constance  Grey  was  there, 
having  been  recalled  by  John  Crondall  from  her  active 
superintendence  of  nursing  at  Portsmouth. 


359 


XVI 

HANDS    ACROSS    THE    SEA 

There  is  a  Pride  whose  Father  is  Understanding,  whose  Mother 
is  Humility,  whose  Business  is  the  Recognition  and  Discharge 
of  Duty.  That  is  the  true  Pride.  —  MERKOW'S  Essays  of  the  Time. 

I  WAS  impatient  to  reach  London,  but  I  should 
have  been  far  more  impatient  if  I  had  known  that 
Constance  Grey   stood  waiting  to   meet   me  on  the 
arrival  platform  at  Waterloo. 

"  They  told  me  your  train  at  the  office,"  she  said, 
as  I  took  one  of  her  hands  in  both  of  mine,  "  and  I 
could  not  resist  coming  to  give  you  the  news.  Don't 
say  you  have  had  it !  " 

"  No,"  I  told  her.  "  My  best  news  is  that  Con- 
stance has  come  to  meet  me,  and  that  I  am  alive  to 
appreciate  the  fact  very  keenly.  Another  trifling 
item  is  that,  so  far  as  I  can  tell,  practically  every 
member  of  The  Citizens  would  respond  to-morrow 
to  a  call  for  active  service  in  Timbuctoo  —  if  the  call 
came.  I  tell  you,  Constance,  this  is  not  reform,  it's 
revolution  that  has  swept  over  England.  We  call 
our  membership  three  and  a  half  millions ;  it's  fifty 
millions,  really.  They're  all  Citizens,  every  mother's 
son  of  them ;  and  every  daughter,  too." 

We  were  in  a  cab  now. 

"  But  what  about  my  news  ?  "    said  Constance. 
360 


"  Yes,  tell  me,  do.  And  isn't  it  magnificent  about 
the  Navy?  How  about  those  'Terrible'  fellows? 
Constance,  do  you  realize  how  all  this  must  strike  a 
man  who  was  scribbling  and  fiddling  about  disarma- 
ment a  year  ago  ?  And  do  you  realize  who  gave  that 
man  decent  sanity?  " 

"  Hush !  It  wasn't  a  person,  it  was  a  force ;  it  was 
the  revolution  that  brought  the  change." 

"  Ah,  well,  God  bless  you,  Constance !  I  wish  you'd 
give  me  the  news." 

"  I  will,  directly  you  give  me  a  chance  to  get  in  a 
word.  Well,  John  is  at  Westminster,  in  consultation 
with  the  Foreign  Office  people,  and  nothing  definite 
has  been  done  yet;  but  the  great  point  is,  to  my 
thinking,  that  the  offer  should  ever  have  been 
made." 

"  Why,  Constance,  whatever  has  bewitched  you  ?  I 
never  knew  you  to  begin  at  the  end  of  a  thing  before." 

And  indeed  it  was  unlike  Constance  Grey.  She  was 
in  high  spirits,  and  somehow  this  little  touch  of  il- 
logical weakness  in  her  struck  me  as  being  very 
charming.  She  laughed,  and  said  it  was  due  to  my 
persistent  interruptions.  And  then  she  gave  me  the 
news. 

"  America  has  offered  to  join  hands  with  us." 

"  Never ! " 

"  Yes.  The  most  generous  sort  of  defensive  alli- 
ance, practically  without  conditions,  and  —  '  as  long 
as  Great  Britain's  present  need  endures.'  Isn't  it 
splendid?  John  Crondall  regards  it  as  the  biggest 
thing  that  has  happened ;  but  he  is  all  against  accept- 
ing the  offer." 

361 


THE     MESSAGE 

There  had  been  vague  rumours  at  the  time  of  the 
invasion,  and  again,  of  a  more  pointed  sort,  when 
Britain  declared  war.  But  every  one  had  said  that 
the  pro-German  party  and  the  ultra-American  party 
were  far  too  strong  in  the  United  States  to  permit 
of  anything  beyond  expressions  of  good-will.  But 
now,  as.  I  gathered  from  the  copy  of  the  Evening 
Standard  which  Constance  gave  me: 

"  The  heart  of  the  American  people  has  been 
deeply  stirred  by  two  considerations:  Germany's  un- 
warrantable insolence  and  arrogance,  and  Britain's 
magnificent  display  of  patriotism,  ashore  and  afloat, 
in  fighting  for  her  independence.  The  patriotic 
struggle  for  independence  —  that  is  what  has  moved 
the  American  people  to  forgetfulness  of  all  jealousies 
and  rivalries.  The  rather  indiscreet  efforts  of  the 
German  sections  of  the  American  public  have  un- 
doubtedly hastened  this  offer,  and  made  it  more  gen- 
erous and  unqualified.  The  suggestion  that  any  for- 
eign people  could  hector  them  out  of  generosity  to 
the  nation  from  whose  loins  they  sprang,  finally  de- 
cided the  American  public ;  and  it  is  fair  to  say  that 
the  President's  offer  of  alliance  is  an  offer  from  the 
American  people  to  the  British  people." 

"  But  how  about  the  Monroe  Doctrine  ?  "  I  said  to 
Constance,  after  running  through  the  two-column 
telegram  from  Washington,  of  which  this  passage 
formed  part. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that ;  but  you  see,  Dick,  this 
thing  clearly  comes  from  the  American  people,  not 
her  politicians  and  diplomatists  only.  That  is  what 
gives  it  its  tremendous  importance,  I  think." 

362 


HANDS    ACROSS    THE    SEA 

"  Yes ;  to  be  sure.  And  why  does  John  Crondall 
want  the  offer  declined?  " 

"  Oh,  he  hadn't  time  to  explain  to  me ;  but  he  said 
something  about  its  being  necessary  for  the  new 
Britain  to  prove  herself,  first;  our  own  unity  and 
strength.  '  We  must  prove  our  own  Imperial  British 
alliance  first,'  he  said." 

"  I  see ;  yes,  I  think  I  see  that.  But  it  is  great 
news,  as  you  say  —  great  news." 

How  much  John  Crondall's  view  had  to  do  with  the 
Government's  decision  will  never  be  known,  but  we 
know  that  England's  deeply  grateful  Message 
pointed  out  that,  in  the  opinion  of  his  Majesty's 
Imperial  Government,  the  most  desirable  basis  for  an 
alliance  between  two  great  nations  was  one  of  equality 
and  mutual  respect.  While  in  the  present  case  there 
could  be  nothing  lacking  in  the  affection  and  esteem 
in  which  Great  Britain  held  the  United  States,  yet  the 
equality  could  hardly  be  held  proven  while  the  former 
Power  was  still  at  war  with  a  nation  which  had  in- 
vaded its  territory.  The  Message  expressed  very  feel- 
ingly the  deep  sense  of  grateful  appreciation  which 
animated  his  Majesty's  Imperial  Government  and  the 
British  people,  which  would  render  unforgettable  in 
this  country  the  generous  magnanimity  of  the  Amer- 
ican nation.  And,  finally,  the  Message  expressed  the 
hope,  which  was  certainly  felt  by  the  entire  public, 
that  those  happier  circumstances  which  should  equal- 
ize the  footing  of  the  two  nations  in  the  matter  of  an 
alliance  would  speedily  come  about. 

To  my  thinking,  our  official  records  contain  no 
document  more  moving  or  more  worthy  of  a  great 

363 


THE     MESSAGE 

nation  than  that  Message,  which,  as  has  so  frequently 
been  pointed  out,  was  in  actual  truth  a  Message  from 
the  people  of  one  nation  to  the  people  of  another 
nation  —  from  the  heart  of  one  country  to  the  heart 
of  another  country.  The  Message  of  thanks,  no  less 
than  the  generous  offer  itself,  was  an  assertion  of 
blood-kinship,  an  appeal  to  first  principles,  a  revela- 
tion of  the  underlying  racial  and  traditional  tie  which 
binds  two  great  peoples  together  through  and  be- 
neath the  whole  stiff  robe  of  artificial  differences  which 
separated  them  upon  the  surface  and  in  the  world's 
eyes. 

The  offer  stands  for  all  time  a  monument  to  the 
frank  generosity  and  humanity  of  the  American  peo- 
ple. And  in  the  hearts  of  both  peoples  there  is,  in 
my  belief,  another  monument  to  certain  sturdy  quali- 
ties which  have  gone  to  the  making  and  cementing  of 
the  British  Empire.  The  shape  that  monument  takes 
is  remembrance  of  the  Message  in  which  that  kindly 
offer  was  for  the  time  declined. 

The  declining  of  the  American  offer  has  been  called 
the  expression  of  a  nation's  pride.  It  was  that,  inci- 
dentally. First  and  foremost  —  and  this,  I  think,  is 
the  point  which  should  never  be  forgotten  —  it  was 
the  expression  of  a  nation's  true  humility.  Pride  we 
had  always  with  us  in  England,  of  the  right  sort  and 
the  wrong  sort;  of  the  sort  that  adds  to  a  people's 
stature,  and  sometimes,  of  late,  of  the  gross  and 
senseless  sort  that  leads  a  people  into  decadence.  But 
in  the  past  year  we  had  learned  to  know  and  cherish 
that  true  pride  which  has  its  foundations  in  the  rock 
of  Duty,  and  is  buttressed  all  about  and  crowned  by 

364 


HANDS    ACROSS    THE    SEA 

that  quality  which  St.  Peter  said  earned  the  grace  of 
God  —  humility. 

For  my  part,  I  see  in  that  Message  the  ripe  fruit 
of  the  Canadian  preachers'  teaching;  the  crux  and 
essence  of  the  simple  faith  which  came  to  be  called 
"  British  Christianity."  I  think  the  spirit  of  it  was 
the  spirit  of  the  general  revival  in  England  that  came 
to  us  with  the  Canadian  preachers ;  even  as  so  much 
other  help,  spiritual  and  material,  came  to  us  from 
our  kinsmen  of  the  greater  Britain  overseas,  which, 
before  that  time,  we  had  never  truly  recognized  as 
actually  part,  and  by  far  the  greater  part,  of  our 
State.  " 


365 


XVII 

THE    PENALTY 

We  cannot  all  be  masters,  nor  all  masters 
Cannot  be  truly  followed.  —  Othello. 

f  T  would  be  distinctly  a  work  of  supererogation  for 
-*-  me  to  attempt  to  tell  the  story  of  the  Anglo- 
German  war  —  of  all  modern  wars  the  most  remark- 
able in  some  ways,  and  certainly  the  war  which  has 
been  most  exhaustively  treated  by  modern  historians. 
A.  Low  says  in  the  concluding  chapter  of  his  fine  his- 
tory: 

"  Putting  aside  the  fighting  in  South  Africa,  and 
after  the  initial  destruction  of  both  the  German  Navy 
and  its  Army  in  England  (as  effective  forces),  we 
must  revert  to  the  wars  of  more  than  a  century  ago 
to  find  parallels  for  this  remarkable  conflict.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  at  the  time  of  the  invasion  of 
England  Germany's  effective  fighting  strength  was 
enormous.  Its  growth  had  been  very  rapid ;  its  de- 
cline must  be  dated  from  General  von  Fiichter's  occu- 
pation of  London  on  Black  Saturday. 

"  At  that  moment  everything  appeared  to  bode  well 
for  the  realization  of  the  Emperor's  ambition  to  be 
Dictator  of  Europe,  as  the  ruler  of  by  far  the  great- 
est Power  in  the  Old  World.  From  that  moment  the 
German  people,  but  more  particularly  the  German 

366 


THE    PENALTY 

official  and  governing  class,  and  her  naval  and  mili- 
tary men,  would  appear  to  have  imbibed  of  some  dis- 
tillation of  their  Emperor's  exaggerated  pride,  and 
found  it  too  heady  an  elixir  for  their  sanity.  It 
would  ill  become  us  to  dilate  at  length  upon  the 
extremes  into  which  their  arrogance  and  luxurious- 
ness  led  them.  With  regard,  at  all  events,  to  the 
luxury  and  indulgence,  we  ourselves  had  been  very 
far  from  guiltless.  But  it  may  be  that  our  extrava- 
gance was  less  deadly,  for  the  reason  that  it  was  of 
slower  growth.  Certain  it  is,  that  before  ever  an 
English  shot  was  fired  the  fighting  strength  of  Ger- 
many waned  rapidly  from  the  period  of  the  invasion. 
By  some  writers  this  has  been  attributed  to  the  in- 
sidious spread  of  Socialism.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  deterioration  was  far  more  notable  in 
the  higher  than  in  the  lower  walks  of  life ;  and  most 
of  all  it  was  notable  among  the  naval  and  military 
official  nobility,  who  swore  loudest  by  lineage  and  the 
divine  privileges  of  ancient  pedigrees. 

"  When  the  German  army  of  occupation  in  Eng- 
land was  disarmed,  prisoners  in  barracks  and  camps, 
and  the  German  Navy  had,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, been  destroyed,  the  Imperial  German  Govern- 
ment adopted  the  extraordinary  course  of  simply 
defying  England  to  strike  further  blows.  Germany 
practically  ceased  to  fight  (no  reinforcements  were 
ever  landed  in  South  Africa,  and  the  German  troops 
already  engaged  there  had  no  other  choice  than  to 
continue  fighting,  though  left  entirely  without  Impe- 
rial backing),  but  emphatically  refused  to  consider 
the  extremely  moderate  terms  offered  by  Britain, 

367 


THE     MESSAGE 

which,  at  that  time,  did  not  even  include  an  indemnity. 
But  this  extraordinary  policy  was  not  so  purely  cal- 
lous and  cynical  as  was  supposed.  Like  most  things 
in  this  world,  it  had  its  different  component  parts. 
There  was  the  cynical  arrogance  of  the  Prussian 
Court  upon  the  one  side;  but  upon  the  other  side 
there  was  the  ominous  disaffection  of  the  lesser  Ger- 
man States,  and  the  rampant,  angry  Socialism  of  the 
lower  and  middle  classes  throughout  the  Empire, 
which  had  become  steadily  more  and  more  virulent 
from  the  time  of  the  reactionary  elections  of  the  early 
part  of  1907,  in  which  the  Socialists  felt  that  they 
had  been  tricked  by  the  Court  party.  In  reality 
Germany  had  two  mouthpieces.  The  Court  defied 
Britain ;  the  people  refused  to  back  that  defiance  with 
action." 

For  a  brief  summary  of  the  causes  leading  up  to 
the  strange  half-year  which  followed  our  receipt  of  the 
American  offer  of  assistance,  I  think  we  have  noth- 
ing more  lucid  than  this  passage  of  Low's  important 
work.  That  the  forces  at  work  in  Germany,  which 
he  described  from  the  vantage-point  of  a  later  date, 
were  pretty  clearly  understood,  even  at  that  time,  by 
our  Government,  is  proved,  I  think,  by  the  tactics 
we  adopted  throughout  that  troublous  period. 

In  South  Africa  our  troops,  though  amply  strong, 
never  adopted  an  aggressive  line.  They  defended  our 
frontiers,  and  that  defence  led  to  some  heavy  fighting. 
But,  after  the  first  outbreak  of  hostilities,  our  men 
never  carried  the  war  into  the  enemy's  camp.  There 
was  a  considerable  party  in  the  House  of  Commons 
which  favoured  an  actively  aggressive  policy  in  the 

368 


THE    PENALTY 

matter  of  seizing  the  Mediterranean  strongholds  ceded 
to  Germany  at  the  time  of  the  invasion.  It  was  even 
suggested  that  we  should  land  a  great  Citizen  army 
in  Germany  and  enforce  our  demands  at  the  point  of 
the  sword. 

In  this  John  Crondall  rendered  good  service  to  the 
Government  by  absolutely  refusing  to  allow  his  name 
to  be  used  in  calling  out  The  Citizens  for  such  a 
purpose.  But,  in  any  case,  wiser  counsels  prevailed 
without  much  difficulty.  There  was  never  any  real 
danger  of  our  returning  to  the  bad  old  days  of  a 
divided  Parliament.  The  gospel  of  Duty  taught  by 
the  Canadian  preachers,  and  the  stern  sentiment 
behind  The  Citizens'  watchword,  had  far  too  strong 
a  hold  upon  the  country  for  that. 

Accordingly,  the  Government  policy  had  free  play. 
No  other  policy  could  have  been  more  effective,  more 
humane,  or  more  truly  direct  and  economical.  In 
effect,  the  outworking  of  it  meant  a  strictly  defensive 
attitude  in  Africa,  and  in  the  north  a  naval  siege  of 
Germany. 

Germany  had  no  Navy  to  attack,  and,  because  they 
believed  England  would  never  risk  landing  an  army 
in  Germany,  the  purblind  camarilla  who  stood  between 
the  Emperor's  arrogance  and  the  realities  of  life  as- 
sumed that  England  would  be  powerless  to  carry 
hostilities  further.  Or  if  the  Imperial  Court  did  not 
actually  believe  this,  it  was  ostensibly  the  Govern- 
ment theory,  the  poor  sop  they  flung  to  a  disaffected 
people  while  filling  their  official  organs  with  news  of 
wonderful  successes  achieved  by  the  German  forces  in 
South  Africa. 

369 


THE     MESSAGE 

But  within  three  months  our  Navy  had  taught  the 
German  people  that  the  truth  lay  in  quite  another 
direction.  The  whole  strength  of  the  British  Navy 
which  could  be  spared  from  southern  and  eastern 
bases  was  concentrated  now  upon  the  task  of  blocking 
Germany's  oversea  trade.  Practically  no  loss  of  life 
was  involved,  but  day  by  day  the  ocean-going  vessels 
of  Germany's  mercantile  marine  were  being  trans- 
ferred to  the  British  flag.  The  great  oversea  carry- 
ing trade,  whose  growth  had  been  the  pride  of  Ger- 
many, was  absolutely  and  wholly  destroyed  during 
that  half-year.  The  destruction  of  her  export  trade 
spelt  ruin  for  Germany's  most  important  industries ; 
but  it  was  the  cutting  off  of  her  imports  which  finally 
robbed  even  the  German  Emperor  of  the  power  to 
shut  his  eyes  any  longer  to  the  fact  that  his  Empire 
had  in  reality  ceased  to  exist. 

The  actual  overthrow  of  monarchical  government 
in  Prussia  was  not  accomplished  without  scenes  of 
excess  and  violence  in  the  capital.  But,  in  justice  to 
the  German  people  as  a  whole,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  the  revolution  was  carried  out  at  remark- 
ably small  cost ;  that  the  people  displayed  wonderful 
patience  and  self-control,  in  circumstances  of  mad- 
dening difficulty,  which  were  aggravated  at  every 
turn  by  the  Emperor's  arbitrary  edicts  and  arrogant 
obtrusion  of  his  personal  will,  and  by  the  insolence 
of  the  official  class.  One  must  remember  that  for  sev- 
eral decades  Germany  had  been  essentially  an  indus- 
trial country,  and  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  her 
population  were  at  once  strongly  imbued  with  Social- 
istic theories,  and  wholly  dependent  upon  industrial 

370 


THE    PENALTY 

activity.  Bearing  these  things  in  mind,  one  is  moved 
to  wonder  that  the  German  people  could  have  endured 
so  long  as  they  did  the  practically  despotic  sway  of 
a  Ruler  who,  in  the  gratification  of  his  own  insensate 
pride,  allowed  their  country  to  be  laid  waste  by  the 
stoppage  of  trade,  and  their  homes  to  be  devastated 
by  the  famine  of  an  unemployed  people  whose  com- 
munications with  the  rest  of  the  world  were  com- 
pletely severed. 

That  such  a  ruler  and  such  a  Court  should  have 
met  with  no  worse  fate  than  deposition,  exile,  and 
dispersal  is  something  of  a  tribute  to  the  temperate 
character  of  the  Teutonic  race.  Bavaria,  Wurtem- 
burg,  Saxony,  and  the  southern  Grand  Duchies 
elected  to  retain  their  independent  forms  of  govern- 
ment under  hereditary  rule ;  and  to  this  no  objection 
was  raised  by  the  new  Prussian  Republic,  in  which  all 
but  one  of  the  northern  principalities  were  incor- 
porated. 

Within  forty-eight  hours  of  the  election  of  Dr. 
Carl  Moller  to  the  Presidency  of  the  new  Republic, 
hostilities  ceased  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany, 
and  three  weeks  later  the  Peace  was  signed  in  London 
and  Berlin.  Even  hostile  critics  have  admitted  that 
the  British  terms  were  not  ungenerous.  The  war  was 
the  result  of  Germany's  unprovoked  invasion  of  our 
shores.  The  British  terms  were,  in  lieu  of  indemnity, 
the  cession  of  all  German  possessions  in  the  African 
continent  to  the  British  Crown,  unreservedly.  For 
the  rest,  Britain  demanded  no  more  than  a  complete 
and  unqualified  withdrawal  of  all  German  claims  and 
pretensions  in  the  matter  of  the  Peace  terms  enforced 

371 


THE     MESSAGE 

after  the  invasion  by  General  Baron  von  Fiichter, 
including,  of  course,  the  immediate  evacuation  of  all 
those  points  of  British  territory  which  had  been 
claimed  in  the  invasion  treaty,  an  instrument  now  null 
and  void. 

The  new  Republic  was  well  advised  in  its  grateful 
acceptance  of  these  terms,  for  they  involved  no  mone- 
tary outlay,  and  offered  no  obstacle  to  the  new  Gov- 
ernment's task  of  restoration.  At  that  early  stage, 
at  all  events,  the  Prussian  Republic  had  no>  colonial 
ambitions,  and  needed  all  its  straitened  financial  re- 
sources for  the  rehabilitation  of  its  home  life.  (In 
the  twelve  months  following  the  declaration  of  war 
between  Great  Britain  and  Germany,  the  number  of 
Germans  who  emigrated  reached  the  amazing  total  of 
1,134,378.) 

To  me,  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  significant 
features  of  the  actual  conclusion  of  the  Peace  — 
which  added  just  over  one  million  square  miles  to 
Britain's  African  possessions,  and  left  the  Empire,  in 
certain  vital  respects,  infinitely  richer  and  more  pow- 
erful than  ever  before  in  its  history  —  is  not  so  much 
as  mentioned  in  any  history  of  the  war  I  have  ever 
read,  though  it  did  figure,  modestly,  in  the  report  of 
the  Commissioner  of  Police  for  that  year.  As  a  side- 
light upon  the  development  of  our  national  character 
since  the  arrival  of  the  Canadian  preachers  and  the 
organization  of  The  Citizens,  this  one  brief  passage 
in  an  official  record  is  to  my  mind  more  luminous  than 
anything  I  could  possibly  say,  and  far  more  precious 
than  the  fact  of  our  territorial  acquisitions: 

"  The  news  of  the  signature  of  the  Peace  was  pub- 
372 


THE    PENALTY 

lished  in  the  early  editions  of  the  evening  papers  on 
Saturday,  11  March.  Returns  show  that  the  cus- 
tom of  the  public-houses  and  places  of  entertainment 
during  the  remainder  of  that  day  was  37^  per  cent, 
below  the  average  Saturday  returns.  Divisional  re- 
ports show  that  the  streets  were  more  empty  of  traffic, 
both  vehicular  and  pedestrian,  than  on  any  ordinary 
week-day.  Police-court  cases  on  the  following  Mon- 
day were  £8^/2  per  cent,  below  the  average,  and  in- 
cluded, in  the  metropolitan  area,  only  five  cases  of 
drunkenness  or  disorderly  conduct.  All  reports  indi- 
cate the  prevalence  throughout  the  metropolitan  area 
of  private  indoor  celebrations  of  the  Peace.  All 
London  churches  and  chapels  held  Thanksgiving 
Services  on  Sunday,  12  March,  and  the  attendances 
were  abnormally  large." 

Withal,  I  am  certain  that  the  people  of  London 
had  never  before  during  my  life  experienced  a  deeper 
sense  of  gladness,  a  more  general  consciousness  of  re- 
joicing. Not  for  nothing  has  "  British  Christianity  " 
earned  its  Parisian  name  of  "  New  Century  Puritan- 
ism." As  the  President  of  the  French  Republic  said 
in  his  recent  speech  at  Lyons :  "  It  is  the  '  New  Cen- 
tury Puritanism  '  which  leads  the  new  century's  civili- 
zation, and  maintains  the  world's  peace." 


373 


XVIII 

THE    PEACE 

Fair  is  our  lot  —  O  goodly  is  our  heritage  I 

(Humble  ye,  my  people,  and  be  fearful  in  your  mirth  1) 

For  the  Lord  our  God  Most  High 

He  hath  made  the  deep  as  dry, 

He  hath  smote  for  us  a  pathway  to  the  ends  of  all  the  earth. 

RUDTAKD  KIPLING. 

AT  a  very  early  stage  of  the  war  with  Germany, 
before  the  end  of  the  first  month,  in  fact,  it 
became  evident  that,  our  own  soil  having  once  been 
freed,  this  was  to  be  a  maritime  and  not  a  land  war. 
A  little  later  on  it  was  made  quite  clear  that  there 
would  be  no  need  to  draw  further  upon  our  huge 
reserve  force  of  Citizen  defenders.  It  was  then  that 
John  Crondall  concentrated  his  efforts  upon  giving 
permanent  national  effect  to  our  work  of  the  previous 
year. 

Fortunately,  the  Government  recognized  that  it 
would  be  an  act  of  criminal  wastefulness  and  extrav- 
agance to  allow  so  splendid  a  defensive  organization 
as  ours  to  lapse  because  its  immediate  purpose  had 
been  served.  Accordingly,  special  legislation,  which 
was  to  have  been  postponed  for  another  session,  was 
now  hurried  forward;  and  long  before  the  German 
Revolution  and  the  conclusion  of  the  Peace,  England 

374 


THE    PEACE 

was  secure  in  the  possession  of  that  permanent  or- 
ganization of  home  defence  which,  humanly  speaking, 
has  made  these  shores  positively  impregnable,  by  con- 
verting Great  Britain,  the  metropolis  and  centre  of 
the  Empire,  into  a  nation  in  arms.  There  is  no  need 
for  me  to  enlarge  now  upon  the  other  benefits,  the 
mental,  moral,  and  physical  advancement  which  this 
legislation  has  given  us.  Our  doctors  and  school- 
masters and  clergymen  have  given  us  full  and  ample 
testimony  upon  these  points. 

Prior  to  the  passing  of  the  National  Defence  Act, 
which  guaranteed  military  training  as  a  part  of  the 
education  of  every  healthy  male  subject,  the  great 
majority  of  The  Citizens  had  returned  to  private  life. 
Yet,  with  the  exception  of  some  few  hundreds  of 
special  cases,  every  one  of  The  Citizens  remained 
members  of  the  organization.  And  it  was  that  fact 
which  provided  incessant  employment,  not  alone  for 
John  Crondall  and  myself,  and  our  headquarters 
staff,  during  the  progress  of  the  war,  but  for  our 
committees  throughout  the  country. 

Before  reentering  private  life,  every  Citizen  was 
personally  interviewed  and  given  the  opportunity  of 
being  resworn  under  conditions  of  permanent  member- 
ship. The  new  conditions  applied  only  to  home  de- 
fence, but  they  included  specific  adherence  to  our 
propaganda  for  the  maintenance  of  universal  military 
training.  They  included  also  a  definite  undertaking 
upon  the  part  of  every  Citizen  to  further  our  ends 
to  the  utmost  of  his  ability,  and,  irrespective  of  State 
legislation,  to  secure  military  training  for  his  own 
sons,  and  to  abide  by  The  Citizens'  Executive  in  what- 

375 


ever  steps  it  should  take  toward  linking  up  our  or- 
ganization, under  Government  supervision,  with  the 
regular  national  defence  force  of  the  country. 

It  should  be  easy  to  understand  that  this  process 
involved  a  great  deal  of  work.  But  it  was  work  that 
was  triumphantly  rewarded,  for,  upon  the  passage 
into  law  of  the  Imperial  Defence  Act,  which  super- 
seded the  National  Defence  Act,  after  the  peace  had 
been  signed,  we  were  able  to  present  the  Government 
with  a  nucleus  consisting  of  a  compact  working  or- 
ganization of  more  than  three  million  British  Citizens. 
These  Citizens  were  men  who  had  undergone  training 
and  seen  active  service.  They  were  sworn  supporters 
of  universal  military  training,  and  of  a  minimum  of 
military  service  as  a  qualification  for  the  suffrage. 

All  political  writers  have  agreed  that  the  knowl- 
edge of  what  was  taking  place  in  England,  with 
regard  to  our  organization,  greatly  strengthened  the 
hands  of  the  Imperial  Parliament  in  its  difficult  task 
of  framing  and  placing  upon  the  Statute  Book  those 
two  great  measures  which  have  remained  the  basis  of 
politics  and  defence  throughout  the  Empire :  the  Im- 
perial Defence  Act  and  the  Imperial  Parliamentary 
Representation  Act.  At  the  time  there  were  not  want- 
ing critics  who  held  that  a  short  reign  of  peace  would 
bring  opposition  to  legislation  born  of  a  state  of  war ; 
but  if  I  remember  rightly  we  heard  the  last  of  that 
particular  order  of  criticism  within  twelve  months  of 
the  peace,  it  being  realized  once  and  for  all  then,  that 
the  maintenance  of  an  adequate  defence  system  was 
to  be  regarded,  not  so  much  as  a  preparation  for 

376 


THE    PEACE 

possible  war,  as  the  one  and  only  means  of  preventing 
war. 

Constance  Grey  worked  steadily  throughout  the 
progress  of  the  war,  and  it  was  owing  almost  entirely 
to  her  efforts  that  the  Volunteer  Nursing  Corps, 
which  she  had  organized  under  Citizens'  auspices,  was 
placed  on  a  permanent  footing.  Admirable  though 
this  organization  was  as  a  nursing  corps,  its  actual 
value  to  the  nation  went  far  beyond  the  limits  of  its 
nominal  scope.  By  her  tireless  activity,  and  as  a 
result  of  her  own  personal  enthusiasm,  Constance  was 
able  before  the  end  of  the  war  to  establish  branches 
of  her  corps  in  every  part  of  the  country,  with  a  com- 
mittee and  headquarters  in  all  large  centres.  Meet- 
ings were  held  regularly  at  all  these  headquarters, 
every  one  of  which  was  visited  in  turn  by  Constance 
herself ;  and  in  the  end  The  Citizens'  Nursing  Corps, 
as  this  great  league  of  Englishwomen  was  always 
called,  became  a  very  potent  force,  an  inexhaustible 
spring  of  what  the  Prime  Minister  called  "  the  domes- 
tic patriotism  of  Britain." 

In  the  earliest  stage  of  this  work  of  hers  Constance 
had  to  cope  with  a  certain  inertia  on  the  part  of  her 
supporters,  due  to  the  fact  that  no  active  service 
offered  to  maintain  their  enthusiasm.  But  Con- 
stance's watchword  was,  "  Win  mothers  and  sisters, 
and  the  fathers  and  brothers  cannot  fail  you."  It 
was  in  that  belief  that  she  acted,  and  before  long  the 
Nursing  Corps  might  with  equal  justice  have  been 
called  The  Women  Citizens.  It  became  a  great 
league  of  domestic  patriots,  and  it  would  not  be  easy 

377 


THE     MESSAGE 

to  overstate  the  value  of  its  influence  upon  the  rising 
generation  of  our  race. 

War  has  always  been  associated  in  men's  minds 
with  distress  and  want,  and  that  with  some  reason. 
But  after  the  first  few  months  of  the  Anglo-German 
war  it  became  more  and  more  clearly  apparent  that 
this  war,  combined  with  the  outworking  of  the  first 
legislation  of  the  Imperial  Parliament,  was  to  produce 
the  greatest  commercial  revival,  the  greatest  access 
of  working  prosperity,  Britain  had  ever  known.  Two 
main  causes  were  at  work  here ;  and  the  first  of  them, 
undoubtedly,  was  the  protection  afforded  to  our  in- 
dustries by  Imperial  preference.  The  time  for  tink- 
ering with  half-measures  had  gone  by,  and,  accord- 
ingly, the  fiscal  belt  with  which  the  first  really  Impe- 
rial Parliament  girdled  the  Empire  was  made  broad 
and  strong.  The  effect  of  its  application  was  grad- 
ual, but  unmistakable;  its  benefits  grew  daily  more 
apparent  as  the  end  of  the  war  approached. 

Factories  and  mills  which  had  long  lain  idle  in  the 
North  of  England  were  hastily  refitted,  and  they 
added  every  day  to  the  muster-roll  of  hands  employed. 
Our  shipping  increased  by  leaps  and  bounds,  but 
even  then  barely  kept  pace  with  the  increased  rate 
of  production.  The  price  of  the  quartern  loaf  rose 
to  sixpence,  in  place  of  fivepence;  but  the  wages  of 
labourers  on  the  land  rose  by  nearly  25  per  cent., 
and  the  demand  exceeded  the  supply.  Thousands  of 
acres  of  unprofitable  grass-land  and  of  quite  idle 
land  disappeared  under  the  plough  to  make  way  for 
corn-fields.  Wages  rose  in  all  classes  of  work ;  but 
that  was  not  of  itself  the  most  important  advance. 

378 


THE    PEACE 

The  momentous  change  was  in  the  demand  for  labour 
of  every  kind.  The  statistics  prove  that  while  wages 
in  all  trades  showed  an  average  increase  of  19^/2  per 
cent.,  unemployment  fell  during  the  year  of  the  Peace 
to  a  lower  level  than  it  had  ever  reached  since  records 
were  instituted. 

In  that  year  the  cost  of  living  among  working 
people  was  5^/2  P61"  cent,  higher  than  it  had  been  five 
years  previously.  The  total  working  earnings  for 
the  year  were  38^/2  per  cent,  greater  than  in  any 
previous  year.  Since  then,  as  we  know,  expenditure 
has  fallen  considerably ;  but  wages  have  never  fallen, 
and  the  total  earnings  of  our  people  are  still  on  the 
up  grade. 

Another  cause  of  the  unprecedented  access  of  pros- 
perity which  changed  the  face  of  industrial  and  agri- 
cultural England,  was  the  fact  that  some  seven-tenths 
of  the  trade  lost  by  Germany  was  now  not  only  car- 
ried in  British  ships,  but  held  entirely  in  British 
hands.  Germany's  world  markets  became  Britain's 
markets,  just  as  the  markets  of  the  whole  Empire 
became  our  own  as  the  result  of  preference,  and  just 
as  the  great  oversea  countries  of  the  Empire  found 
Britain's  home  markets,  with  fifty  million  customers, 
exclusively  their  own.  The  British  public  learned 
once  and  for  all,  and  in  one  year,  the  truth  that  re- 
formers had  sought  for  a  decade  to  teach  us  —  that 
the  Empire  was  self-supporting  and  self-sufficing, 
and  that  common-sense  legislative  and  commercial 
recognition  of  this  fundamental  fact  spelt  prosperity 
for  British  subjects  the  world  over. 

But,  as  John  Crondall  said  in  the  course  of  the 
379 


THE     MESSAGE 

Guildhall  speech  of  his  which,  as  has  often  been  said, 
brought  the  Disciplinary  Regiments  into  being,  "  We 
cannot  expect  to  cure  in  a  year  ills  that  we  have 
studiously  fostered  through  the  better  part  of  a  cen- 
tury." There  was  still  an  unemployed  class,  though 
everything  points  to  the  conclusion  that  before  that 
first  year  of  the  Peace  was  ended  this  class  had  been 
reduced  to  those  elements  which  made  it  more  prop- 
erly called  "  unemployable."  There  were  the  men 
who  had  forgotten  their  trades  and  their  working 
habits,  and  there  were  still  left  some  of  those  melan- 
choly products  of  our  decadent  industrial  and  social 
systems  —  the  men  who  were  determined  not  to  work. 
In  a  way,  it  is  as  well  that  these  ills  could  not  be 
swept  aside  by  the  same  swift,  irresistible  wave  which 
gave  us  "  British  Christianity,"  The  Citizens'  watch- 
word, Imperial  Federation,  and  the  beginning  of 
great  prosperity.  It  was  the  continued  existence  of 
a  workless  class  that  gave  us  the  famous  Discipline 
Bill.  At  that  time  the  title  "  Disciplinary  Regi- 
ments "  had  a  semidisgraceful  suggestion,  connected 
with  punishment.  In  view  of  that,  I  shared  the  feel- 
ing of  many  who  said  that  another  name  should  be 
chosen.  But  now  that  the  Disciplinary  Regiments 
have  earned  their  honourable  place  as  the  most  valu- 
able portion  of  our  non-professional  defence  forces, 
every  one  can  see  the  wisdom  of  John  Crondall's  con- 
tention that  not  the  name,  but  the  public  estimate  of 
that  name,  had  to  be  altered.  Theoretically  the  value 
and  necessity  of  discipline  was,  I  suppose,  always 
recognized.  Actually,  people  had  come  to  connect 
the  word,  not  with  education,  not  with  the  equipment 

380 


THE    PEACE 

of  every  true  citizen,  but  chiefly  with  punishment  and 
disgrace. 

At  first  there  was  considerable  opposition  to  the 
law,  which  said,  in  effect :  No  able-bodied  man  without 
means  shall  live  without  employment.  Indeed,  for  a 
few  days  there  was  talk  of  the  Government  going  to 
the  country  on  the  question.  But  in  the  end  the 
Discipline  Act  became  law  without  this,  and  I  know 
of  no  other  single  measure  which  has  done  more  for 
the  cause  of  social  progress.  Its  effects  have  been 
far-reaching.  Among  other  things,  it  was  this  meas- 
ure which  led  to  the  common-sense  system  which  makes 
a  soldier  of  every  mechanic  and  artisan  employed 
upon  Government  work.  It  introduced  the  system 
which  enables  so  many  men  to  devote  a  part  of  their 
time  to  soldiering,  and  the  rest  to  various  other  kinds 
of  Government  work.  But,  of  course,  its  main  reason 
of  existence  is  the  triumphant  fact  that  it  has  done 
away  with  the  loafer,  as  a  class,  and  reduced  the 
chances  of  genuine  employment  to  a  minimum.  Some 
of  the  best  mechanics  and  artisans  in  England  to-day 
are  men  who  learned  their  trade,  along  with  soldier- 
ing and  general  good  citizenship,  in  one  of  the  Dis- 
ciplinary Regiments. 

Despite  the  increase  of  population,  the  numerical 
strength  of  our  police  force  throughout  the  kingdom 
is  30  per  cent,  lower  to-day  than  it  was  before  the 
Anglo-German  war;  while,  as  is  well  known,  the 
prison  population  has  fallen  so  low  as  to  have  led  to 
the  conversion  of  several  large  prisons  into  hospitals. 
The  famous  Military  Training  School  at  Dartmoor 
was  a  convict  prison  up  to  three  years  after  the  war. 

381 


THE     MESSAGE 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  but  for  the  Discipline 
Bill,  our  police  force  would  have  required  strengthen- 
ing and  prisons  enlarging,  in  place  of  the  reverse 
process  of  which  we  enjoy  the  benefit  to-day. 

Its  promoters  deserve  all  the  credit  which  has  been 
paid  them  for  the  introduction  of  this  famous  meas- 
ure; and  I  take  the  more  pleasure  in  admitting  this 
by  token  that  the  chief  among  them  has  publicly 
recorded  his  opinion  that  the  man  primarily  respon- 
sible for  the  introduction  of  the  Discipline  Bill  was 
John  Crondall.  At  the  same  time  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  we  have  John  Crondall's  own  assurance 
that  the  Bill  could  never  have  been  made  law  but  for 
that  opening  and  awakening  of  the  hearts  and  minds 
of  the  British  people  which  followed  the  spreading 
of  the  gospel  of  Duty  by  the  Canadian  preachers. 


882 


XIX 

THE    GREAT    ALLIANCE 

Truly  ye  come  of  the  Blood  ;  slower  to  bless  than  to  ban  ; 
Little  used  to  lie  down  at  the  bidding  of  any  man. 

Deeper  than  speech  our  love,  stronger  than  life  our  tether ; 

But  we  do  not  fall  on  the  neck  nor  kiss  when  we  come  together. 

Draw  now  the  threefold  knot  firm  on  the  ninefold  bands, 

And  the  law  that  ye  make  shall  be  law  after  the  rule  of  your  lands. 

RUDYARD  KlPLING. 

DURING  all  this  time  I  was  constantly  with  John 
Crondall,  and  saw  a  good  deal  of  Constance 
Grey;  yet  the  announcement  that  I  had  once  ex- 
pected every  day,  the  announcement  which  seemed  the 
only  natural  sequence  to  the  kiss  of  which  I  had  been 
an  unwilling  witness,  never  came.  Neither  did  any 
return  come,  in  John  Crondall,  of  his  old  frank 
gaiety  of  manner.  There  remained  always  the 
shadow  of  reserve,  of  gravity,  and  of  a  certain  re- 
straint, which  dated  in  my  mind  from  the  day  of  my 
inadvertent  intrusion  upon  the  scene  between  himself 
and  Constance. 

Knowing  John  Crondall  as  I  knew  him  then,  it  was 
not  possible  for  me  to  think  ill  of  him ;  but  he  per- 
plexed me  greatly  at  times.  For  at  times  it  did  seem 
to  me  that  I  read  in  Constance's  face,  when  we  three 


THE     MESSAGE 

were  together,  a  look  that  was  almost  an  appeal  to  my 
chief  —  a  half-sorrowful,  half-abashed  appeal.  Then 
I  would  recall  that  kiss,  and  in  my  puzzlement  I  would 
think :  "  John  Crondall,  if  you  were  any  other  man, 

I  should  say  you " 

And  there  my  thought  would  stop  short.  Of  what 
should  I  accuse  him?  There  was  the  kiss,  the  long 
silence,  John  Crondall's  stiffness,  and  then  this  look 
of  distress,  this  hint  of  appeal,  in  the  face  of  Con- 
stance. Well!  And  then  my  intimate  knowledge  of 
my  chief  would  silence  me,  giving  me  assurance  that  I 
should  never  be  a  good  enough  man  justly  to  re- 
proach John  Crondall.  But  it  was  all  very  puzzling, 
and  more,  to  me,  loving  Constance  as  I  loved  her. 

You  may  judge,  then,  of  my  surprise  when  Cron- 
dall came  into  my  room  at  The  Citizens'  headquarters 
office  one  morning  and  said : 

"  You  have  been  the  real  secretary  for  some  time, 
Dick,  not  only  mine,  but  The  Citizens';  so  there's  no 
need  for  me  to  worry  about  how  you'll  manage.  I'm 
going  to  America." 

"  Going  to  America !     Why  —  when  ?  " 
"  Well,  on  Friday,  I  believe  I  sail.    As  to  why,  I'm 
afraid  I  mustn't  tell  you  about  that  just  yet.     I've 
undertaken  a  Government  mission,  and  it's  confiden- 
tial." 

"  I  see.     And  how  long  will  you  be  away  ?  " 

"  Oh,  not  more  than  two  or  three  months,  I  hope." 

That  simplified  the  thing  somewhat.     My  chief's 

tone  had  suggested  at  first  that  he  was  going  to  live  in 

the  United  States.     Even  as  it  was,  however,  surely, 

I  thought,  he  would  tell  me  something  now  about  him- 

384 


THE    GREAT   ALLIANCE 

self  and  Constance.  But  though  I  made  several  open- 
ings, he  told  me  nothing. 

While  John  Crondall  was  away  a  new  State  Under- 
Secretaryship  was  created.  It  was  announced  that 
for  the  future  the  Government  would  include  an 
Under-Secretary  of  State  for  the  Civilian  Defence 
Forces,  whose  chief  would  be  the  Secretary  of  State 
for  War.  A  few  days  later  came  the  announcement 
that  the  first  to  hold  this  appointment  would  be  John 
Crondall.  I  had  news  of  this  a  little  in  advance  of 
the  public,  for  my  work  in  connection  with  The  Citi- 
zens' organization  brought  me  now  into  frequent  con- 
tact with  the  War  Office,  particularly  with  regard  to 
supplies  and  general  arrangements  for  our  different 
village  rifle-ranges. 

This  piece  of  news  seemed  tolerably  important  to 
Constance  Grey  and  myself,  and  we  talked  it  over 
with  a  good  deal  of  interest  and  enthusiasm.  But 
before  many  weeks  had  passed  this  and  every  other 
item  of  news  was  driven  out  of  our  minds  by  a  piece 
of  intelligence  which,  in  different  ways,  startled  and 
excited  the  whole  civilized  world,  for  the  reason  that 
it  promised  to  affect  materially  the  destiny  of  all  the 
nations  of  civilization.  Every  newspaper  published 
some  kind  of  an  announcement  on  the  subject,  but 
the  first  full,  authoritative  statement  was  that  con- 
tained in  the  great  London  Dally  which  was  now  the 
recognized  principal  organ  of  Imperial  Federation. 
The  opening  portion  of  this  journal's  announcement 
read  in  this  way : 

"  We  are  able  to  announce,  upon  official  authority, 
the  completion  of  a  defensive  and  commercial  Alliance 

385 


THE     MESSAGE 

between  the  British  Empire  and  the  United  States  of 
America,  which  amounts  for  all  practical  purposes  to 
a  political  and  commercial  Federation  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  of  the  world. 

"  Rumours  have  been  current  for  some  time  of 
important  negotiations  pending  between  London  and 
Washington,  and,  as  we  pointed  out  some  time  ago, 
Mr.  John  CrondalPs  business  in  Washington  has  been 
entirely  with  our  Ambassador  there. 

"  The  exact  terms  of  the  new  Alliance  will  prob- 
ably be  made  public  within  the  next  week.  In  the 
meantime,  we  are  able  to  say  that  the  Alliance  will 
be  sufficiently  comprehensive  to  admit  United  States 
trade  within  the  British  Empire  upon  practically 
British  terms  —  that  is  to  say,  the  United  States  will, 
in  almost  every  detail,  share  in  Imperial  Preference. 

"  Further,  in  the  event  of  any  foreign  Power  de- 
claring war  with  either  the  British  Empire  or  the 
United  States,  both  nations  would  share  equally  in 
the  conduct  of  subsequent  hostilities,  unless  the  war 
were  the  direct  outcome  of  an  effort  upon  the  part 
of  either  of  the  high  contracting  parties  in  the  direc- 
tion of  territorial  expansion.  The  United  States  will 
not  assist  the  British  Empire  to  acquire  new  territory, 
but  will  share  from  first  to  last  the  task  of  defending 
existing  British  territory  against  the  attack  of  an 
enemy.  Precisely  the  same  obligations  will  bind  the 
British  Empire  in  the  defence  of  the  United  States. 

"  It  would  scarcely  be  possible  to  exaggerate  the 
importance  to  Christendom  of  this  momentous  achieve- 
ment of  diplomacy ;  and  future  generations  are  little 
likely  to  forget  the  act  or  the  spirit  to  which  this 

386 


THE    GREAT   ALLIANCE 

triumph  may  be  traced:  the  United  States'  offer  of 
assistance  to  Britain  during  the  late  war. 

"  The  advantages  of  the  Alliance  to  our  good 
friends  and  kinsmen  across  the  Atlantic  are  obviously 
great,  for  they  are  at  once  given  free  entry  into  a 
market  which  has  four  hundred  and  twenty  millions 
of  customers,  and  is  protected  by  the  world's  greatest 
Navy  and  the  world's  greatest  citizen  defence  force. 
Upon  our  side  we  are  given  free  entry  into  the  second 
richest  and  most  expansive  market  in  the  world,  with 
eighty  million  customers,  and  an  adequate  defence 
force.  Upon  a  preferential  footing,  such  as  the  Alli- 
ance will  secure  to  both  contracting  Powers,  the 
United  States  offer  us  the  finest  market  in  the  world 
as  an  extension  of  our  own.  In  our  own  markets  we 
shall  meet  the  American  producer  upon  terms  of  ab- 
solute equality,  to  our  mutual  advantage,  where  a 
couple  of  years  ago  we  met  him  at  a  cruel  disadvan- 
tage, to  our  great  loss. 

"  We  have  said  enough  to  indicate  the  vast  and 
world-wide  importance  of  the  Alliance  we  are  able  to 
announce.  But  we  have  left  untouched  its  most 
momentous  aspect.  The  new  Alliance  is  a  guarantee 
of  peace  to  that  half  of  the  world  which  is  primarily 
concerned;  it  renders  a  breach  of  the  peace  in  the 
other  half  of  the  world  far  more  unlikely  than  it  ever 
was  before.  As  a  defensive  Alliance  between  the 
English-speaking  peoples,  this  should  represent  the 
beginning  of  an  era  of  unexampled  peace,  progress, 
and  prosperity  for  the  whole  civilized  world." 

Before  I  had  half -digested  this  tremendous  piece  of 
news,  and  with  never  a  thought  of  breakfast,  I  found 

387 


THE     MESSAGE 

myself  hurrying  in  a  hansom  to  Constance  Grey's 
flat.  In  her  study  I  found  Constance,  her  beautiful 
eyes  full  of  shining  tears,  poring  over  the  announce- 
ment. 


888 


XX 

PEACE    HATH    HER    VICTORIES 

Yet  I  doubt  not  thro'  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of 
the  suns. 

TENNYSON. 

I  HAD  hoped  to  be  the  bearer  of  the  Alliance  news 
to  Constance,  and  seeing  how  deeply  she  was 
moved  by  it  made  me  the  more  regretful  that  I  had 
not  arrived  at  the  flat  before  her  morning  paper. 
Constance  had  been  the  first  to  give  me  the  news  of 
the  American  offer  of  help  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war;  she  had  been  the  first  to  give  me  any  serious 
understanding  of  the  invasion,  there  in  that  very 
room  of  the  little  South  Kensington  flat,  on  the  fate- 
ful Sunday  of  the  Disarmament  Demonstration.  Now 
she  raised  her  gleaming  eyes  to  me  as  I  entered: 

"  A  thing  like  this  makes  up  for  all  the  ills  one's 
ever  known,  Dick,"  she  said,  and  dropped  one  hand 
on  the  paper  in  her  lap. 

"  Yes,  it's  something  like  a  piece  of  news,  is  it  not? 
I  had  hoped  to  bring  it  you,  but  I  might  have  known 
you  would  be  at  your  paper  betimes." 

"  Oh,  it's  magnificent,  Dick,  magnificent !  I  have 
no  words  to  tell  you  how  glad  I  am  about  this.  I  see 
John  Crondall's  hand  here,  don't  you?  " 

389 


THE     MESSAGE 

"  Yes,"  I  said ;  and  thought :  "  Naturally !  You 
see  John  Crondall  everywhere." 

"  He  was  dead  against  any  sort  of  an  Alliance 
while  we  were  under  a  cloud.  And  he  was  right.  The 
British  people  couldn't  afford  to  enter  any  compact 
upon  terms  of  less  than  perfect  equality  and  inde- 
pendence. But  now  —  why,  Dick,  it's  a  dream  come 
true :  the  English-speaking  peoples  against  the  world. 
It's  Imperial  Federation  founded  on  solid  rock.  No ! 
With  its  roots  in  the  beds  of  all  the  seven  seas.  And 
never  a  hint  of  condescension,  but  just  an  honourable 
pact  between  equals  of  one  stock." 

"  Yes ;    and  a  couple  of  years  ago " 

"  A  couple  of  years  ago,  there  were  Englishmen 
who  spat  at  the  British  Flag." 

"  There  was  a  paper  called  The  Mass" 

Constance  smiled  up  at  me.  "  Do  you  remember 
the  Disarmament  Demonstration  ?  "  she  said. 

"  Do  you  remember  going  down  Fleet  Street  into  a 
wretched  den,  to  call  on  the  person  who  was  assistant 
editor  of  The  Mass?  " 

"  The  person !     Come !     I  found  him  rather  nice." 

"  Ah,  Constance,  how  sweet  you  were  to  me !  " 

"  Now,  there,"  she  said,  with  a  little  smile,  "  I 
think  you  might  have  changed  your  tense." 

"  But  I  was  talking  of  two  years  ago,  before  — 
Well,  you  see,  I  thought  of  you,  then,  as  just  an 
unattached  angel  from  South  Africa." 

"  And  now  you  have  learned  that  my  angelic  quali- 
ties never  existed  outside  your  imagination.  Ah, 
Dick,  your  explanations  make  matters  much  worse." 

"  But,  no ;  I  didn't  say  you  were  the  less  an  angel ; 
390 


PEACE    HATH    HER'  VICTORIES 

only  that  I  thought  of  you  as  unattached,  then  —  you 
see." 

Constance  looked  down  at  her  paper,  and  a  silence 
fell  between  us.  The  silence  was  intolerable  to  me.  I 
was  standing  beside  her  chair,  and  I  cannot  explain 
just  what  I  felt  in  looking  down  at  her.  I  know  that 
the  very  outline  of  her  figure  and  the  loose  hair  of 
her  head  seemed  at  once  intimately  familiar  and  inex- 
pressibly sacred  and  beautiful  to  me.  Looking  down 
upon  them  caused  a  kind  of  mist  to  rise  before  my 
eyes.  It  was  as  though  I  feared  to  lose  possession  of 
my  faculties.  That  must  end,  I  felt,  or  an  end  would 
come  to  all  reserve  and  loyalty  to  John  Crondall.  And 
yet  —  yet  something  in  the  curve  of  her  cheek  —  she 
was  looking  down  —  held  me,  drew  me  out  of  myself, 
as  it  might  be  into  a  tranced  state  in  which  a  man  is 
moved  to  contempt  of  all  risks. 

"  Dear,  I  loved  you,  even  then,"  I  said ;  "  but  then 
I  thought  you  free." 

"  So  I  was."  She  did  not  look  at  me,  and  her  voice 
was  very  low ;  but  there  was  some  quality  in  it  which 
thrilled  me  through  and  through,  as  I  stood  at  her 
side. 

"  But  now,  of  course,  I  know But  why  have 

you  never  told  me,  Constance?  " 

"  I  am  just  as  free  now  as  then,  Dick." 

"  Why,  Constance!     But,  John  Crondall?  " 

"  He  is  my  friend,  just  as  he  is  yours." 

"  But  I  —  but  he " 

"  Dick,  I  asked  him  if  I  might  tell  you,  and  he  said, 
yes.  John  asked  me  to  marry  him,  and  when  I  said  I 
couldn't,  he  asked  me  to  wait  till  our  work  was  done, 

391 


THE     MESSAGE 

and  let  him  ask  me  again.  Can't  you  see,  Dick,  how 
hard  it  was  for  me  ?  And  John  is  —  he  is  such  a 
splendid  man.  I  could  not  deny  him,  and  —  that  was 
when  you  came  into  the  room  —  don't  you  remember 
—  Dick?" 

The  mist  was  thickening  about  me;  it  seemed  my 
mind  swam  in  clouds.  I  only  said:  "Yes?" 

"  Oh,  Dick,  I  am  ashamed !  You  know  how  I  re- 
spect him  —  how  I  like  him.  He  did  ask  me  again, 
before  he  went  to  America." 

"  And  now  —  now,  you " 

"  It  hurt  dreadfully ;  but  I  had  to  say  no,  be- 
cause   " 

And  there  she  stopped.  She  was  not  engaged  to 
John  Crondall.  She  had  refused  him  —  refused  John 
Crondall !  Yet  I  knew  how  high  he  stood  in  her  eyes. 
Could  it  be  that  there  was  some  one  else  —  some  one 
in  Africa?  The  suggestion  spelled  panic.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  I  must  know  —  that  I  could  not  bear  to 
leave  her  without  knowing. 

"  Forgive  me,  Constance,"  I  said,  "  but  is  there 
some  one  else  who  —  is  there  some  one  else?"  To 
see  into  her  dear  face,  I  dropped  on  one  knee  beside 
her  chair. 

"I  —  I  thought  there  was,"  she  said  very  sweetly. 
And  as  she  spoke  she  raised  her  head,  and  I  saw  her 
beautiful  eyes,  through  tears.  It  was  there  I  read  my 
happiness.  I  am  not  sure  that  any  words  could  have 
given  it  me,  though  I  found  it  sweeter  than  anything 
else  I  had  known  in  my  life  to  have  her  tell  me  after- 
wards in  words.  It  was  an  unforgettable  morning. 

392 


PEACE    HATH    HER    VICTORIES 

Why  did  she  love  him  ?    Curious  fool!  be  still  ; 
Is  human  love  the  growth  of  human  will  ? 

John  Crondall  was  my  best  man,  as  he  has  been 
always  my  best  friend.  He  insisted  on  my  taking 
over  the  permanent  secretaryship  of  The  Citizens 
when  he  went  to  the  War  Office.  And  since  then  I 
hope  I  have  not  ceased  to  take  my  part  in  making  our 
history ;  but  it  is  true  that  there  is  not  much  to  tell 
that  is  not  known  equally  well  to  everybody. 

Assuredly  peace  hath  her  victories.  Our  national 
life  has  been  a  daily  succession  of  victories  since  we 
fought  for  and  won  real  peace  and  overcame  the 
slavish  notion  that  mere  indolent  quiescence  could 
ever  give  security.  Our  daily  victory  as  a  race  is  the 
triumph  of  race  loyalty  over  individual  self-seeking ; 
and  I  can  conceive  of  no  real  danger  for  the  British 
Empire  unless  the  day  came,  which  God  forbid,  when 
Englishmen  forgot  the  gospel  of  our  "  New  Century 
Puritanism  "  —  the  Canadian  preachers'  teaching  of 
Duty  and  simple  living.  And  that  day  can  never 
come  while  our  Citizens'  watchword  endures: 

"Foa  GOD,  OUR  RACE,  AND  DUTY!" 

For  me,  I  feel  that  my  share  of  happiness,  since 
those  sombre  days  of  our  national  chastisement,  since 
those  stern,  strenuous  months  of  England's  awaken- 
ing to  the  new  life  and  faith  of  the  twentieth  century, 
has  been  more,  far  more,  than  my  deserts.  But  I 
think  we  all  feel  that  in  these  days ;  I  hope  we  do. 
If  we  should  ever  again  forget,  punishment  would 
surely  come.  But  it  is  part  of  my  happiness  to  believe 

393 


THE     MESSAGE 

that,  at  long  last,  our  now  really  united  race,  our 
whole  family,  four  hundred  and  twenty  millions 
strong,  has  truly  learned  the  lesson  which  our  great 
patriot  poet  tried  to  teach  in  the  wild  years  before 
discipline  came  to  us,  in  the  mailed  hand  of  our  one- 
time enemy: 

God  of  our  fathers,  known  of  old, 
Lord  of  our  far-flung  battle-line, 

Beneath  Whose  awful  Hand  we  hold 
Dominion  over  palm  and  pine  — 

Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 

Lest  we  forget  —  lest  we  forget ! 

The  tumult  and  the  shouting  dies  ; 

The  captains  and  the  kings  depart : 
Still  stands  Thine  ancient  sacrifice, 

An  humble  and  a  contrite  heart. 
Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 
Lest  we  forget  —  lest  we  forget ! 

For  heathen  heart  that  puts  her  trust 

In  reeking  tube  and  iron  shard, 
All  valiant  dust  that  builds  on  dust, 

And  guarding,  calls  not  Thee  to  guard, 
For  frantic  boast  and  foolish  word  — 
Thy  Mercy  on  Thy  People,  Lord  I 


Amen! 


394 


PBT 


SOUTHERN  nSlL0/  Ca"'°ml 
S  De  »£M£%*£"SS 


A     000  706  643     4 


